Poems Inspired by Titian - Don Paterson - Metamorphosis - Titian 2012 - The national gallery, London
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My name’s Don Paterson. This is a poem inspired by The Death of Actaeon and I guess it is
a poem about desire and transgression and the way they’re bound closely together.
It’s also about comeuppance. I would say it’s a poem of middle age.
A Call
vellet abesse quidem, sed adest Ovid, Metamorphoses, III
A winter train. A gale, a poacher’s moon. The black glass. Do I honestly still blame
the wrong turn in the changing rooms I took when I was six, and stood too long to look?
The scream Miss Venner loosed at me. ‘The nerve!’
I was ablaze. And it was worth the shame, I thought; of course I did. It was too soon
to tell the dream from what I’d paid for it.
Then soon too late. Two sides of the same door.
So was it the recoil or the release That lashed the world so out of shape? Tonight
I stare right through the face that I deserve as all my ghost dogs gather at the shore,
behind them the whole sea like the police.
