Dear Reader
W.N. Herbert

Murder Bear shaved off all his bloody fur
and sat in the darkness of your kitchen
at the bare careful table you spent so long
scrubbing with salt, rubbing his pate like Kurtz.
The orange oblong of stairlight crayoned
by the doorframe made him grind his teeth.
He filled half the tumbler with Teachers
and topped it up with water. That would learn it.
He spread his papers across your table
and consulted the diagrams that stated
whether you would live or die. Because
he cannot hold the brush, he got you
to make these, although you never knew:
tore the letters from your lists, the glyphs
from your childrens’ paintings, the ones
you’d filed away for later or forever,
you weren’t sure, but – once he’d aligned them
according to those soft dictators, the moths,
discovered ideograms only the stars
should read, and let your kittens lick his claws –
he knew. You never saw a bear so alone.

Poet and pseudo-scholar W.N. Herbert was born in Dundee in 1961 and he now lives and works in Newcastle. He is Professor of Poetry and Creative Writing at Newcastle University, and his books are published by, among others, northern publisher Bloodaxe Books. This poem is from his new collection, Murder Bear, published by Donut Press.