There are other ways to leave the room

Running rest-day ...

... and here's another Don Paterson poem, from his first collection (as pictured) published back in 1993:


Bedfellows

An inch or so above the bed
the yellow blindspot hovers
where the last incumbent's greasy head
has worn away the flowers.

Every night I have to rest
my head in his dead halo;
I feel his heart tick in my wrist;
then, below the pillow,

his suffocated voice resumes
its dreary innuendo:
there are other ways to leave the room
than the door and window