Avril Paton:
Windows on the West

Turn the kaleidoscope and the seventy-eyed creature

Stretches, yawns, shakes the roof snow

Off its back in clumsy dollops, gets a glow

Going, cries of 'It's freezing!' (not really, just a feature

Of tenement winter), puts some coffee on, come on -

How can a single one be a multiple seventy -

I don't know, but I know I like the mystery -

Breathe out, breathe in, never in unison -

'When did you get in last night?' - 'Where the hell

Did you put my razor?' - 'Dog has started

To chew things up again' - 'Well well,

You were going to give it a bone, that's your department' -

'That was never what art meant,

Pictures falling off the wall, everyone has a -'

'Don't throw it away. I might need it' -

'You'll never write a line if you don't heed it

When I tell you there's enough life,

Enough strife

In this old sandstone block

To turn Anna Karenina and The Great Gatsby

Into one noble undefeated cry

Which is the single tenement sigh

Any time, anywhere.

Turn up the heat,

A new day's always sweet.'

'Coffee up.'

'My god another cracked cup.'