Note #5

The Lie

By Don Paterson b. 1963 Don Paterson

As was my custom, I’d risen a full hour
before the house had woken to make sure

that everything was in order with The Lie,

his drip changed and his shackles all secure.

I was by then so practiced in this chore

I’d counted maybe thirteen years or more

since last I’d felt the urge to meet his eye.

Such, I liked to think, was our rapport.

I was at full stretch to test some ligature

when I must have caught a ragged thread, and tore

his gag away; though as he made no cry,

I kept on with my checking as before.

it was a child’s voice. I looked up from the floor.
The dark had turned his eyes to milk and sky
and his arms and legs were all one scarlet sore.

He was a boy of maybe three or four.
His straps and chains were all the things he wore.
Knowing I could make him no reply

and put it back as tight as it would tie
and locked the door and locked the door and locked the door

We all have those lies that haunt us, for if their guise shall fail we will suffer not only those concequences, but of those actions that casued us to lie. "I'd countd maybe thirteen years or more since I'd last felt the urge to meet his eye. Such, I liked to think, was our rapport." Showing time since the man had even gained enough courage to aknowledge what he has done, thirteen years since he has simply maintained his lie without reflecting upon it. "The dark had turned his eyes to milk and sky and his arms were all one scarlet sore." Has one turned blind to what they have done and began to believe their own lie? Forgetting what he had even began to cover up, or has is simply had a blind eye turned onto it, left to die to fading memory. "He was a boy of maybe three or four." The Lie is bound as a child, forced into the dark for none to know of, to be the one forgotten.