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I'd been re-reading Don Paterson in the past weeks for a paper I was writing. I love him so much. He and Alice Fulton are my favorite living poets — edit: the only living poets I whole-heartedly admire. The poem below, the first time I read it, I literally gasped. It's been a long while since I've had that reaction to a text. I wish we could all know this kindness he speaks of.

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Correctives

The shudder in my son's left hand
he cures with one touch from his right,
two fingertips laid feather-light
to still his pen. He understands

the whole man must be his own brother
for no man is himself alone;
though some of us have never known
the one hand's kindness to the other.

Source: Paterson, Don. Selected Poems (Kindle Locations 1603-1608). Faber & Faber. Kindle Edition.

Contemporary fictionists will tell you that there are no heroes and villains, only men and women doing what they think is right (subconsciously motivated by a traumatic experience during their formative years, which they, now in their supposedly mature, conscious state, will re-enact and manoeuvre into their desired end — your friendly psychoanalyst might add).

Take elderly sisters Abby and Martha Brewster, who live together with their mentally challenged nephew, Teddy in a huge Brooklyn house. Inspiration hit them when not long ago, a Mr Midgely knocked on their door, asking for a place to stay. The man — old and without a family to call his own — found a refuge and incidentally his final resting place in the Brewster household, where he died of a heart attack. Teddy (convinced that he is President Teddy Roosevelt) concluded that Mr Midgely fell victim to Yellow Fever and immediately dug a grave for him in the lot.


"He sat dead in that chair looking so peaceful... [Martha and I]…