Home > Poetry Magazine > Why do you stay up so late?

Poetry Magazine

POEM
RELATED CONTENT Discover this poem's context and related poetry.

Why do you stay up so late?

By Don Paterson b. 1963 Don Paterson

For Russ

I’ll tell you, if you really want to know:

remember that day you lost two years ago

at the rockpool where you sat and played the jeweler

with all those stones you’d stolen from the shore?

Most of them went dark and nothing more,

but sometimes one would blink the secret color

it had locked up somewhere in its stony sleep.

This is how you knew the ones to keep.

So I collect the dull things of the day

in which I see some possibility

but which are dead and which have the surprise

I don’t know, and I’ve no pool to help me tell—

so I look at them and look at them until

one thing makes a mirror in my eyes

then I paint it with the tear to make it bright.

This is why I sit up through the night.

Source: Poetry (September 2009).

Biography

Originally from Dundee, Scotland, Don Paterson left school at 16 and moved to London to pursue music and join a band. He found success with the jazz-folk ensemble Lammas, but was captivated by poetry upon encountering poet Tony Harrison. A self-taught poet influenced by Coleridge, Paul Muldoon, Derek Mahon, and Michael Longley, Paterson devoted a year to reading before he began to write and publish in earnest.

Paterson’s first . . .

Continue reading this biography