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Don Paterson is an award-winning poet, editor and teacher, but for all his technical ability and the recognition that has been paid to his work Paterson is acutely aware of awe and sometimes envy when he looks at the work of other writers. Here he applies his wit and skills of technical analysis to discussing the five poems he wishes he had written.\nTonight, Michael Donaghy 'The Hunter's Purse'.

The Hunter's Purse

is the last unshattered 78 \nby 'Patrolman Jack O'Ryan, violin', \na Sligo fiddler in dry America.

A legend, he played Manhattan's ceilidhs,\nfell asleep drunk one snowy Christmas\non a Central Park bench and froze solid.\nThey shipped his corpse home, like his records.

This record's record is its lunar surface. \nI wouldn't risk my stylus to this gouge, \nor this crater left by a flick of ash -

When Anne Quinn got hold of it back in Kilrush,\nshe took her fiddle to her shoulder\nand cranked the new Horn of Plenty\nVictrola over and over and over,\nand scratched along until she had it right \nor until her father shouted

'We'll have no more \nOf that tune\nIn this house tonight'.

She slipped out back and strapped the contraption \nto the parcel rack and rode her bike\nto a far field, by moonlight.

It skips. The penny I used for ballast slips. \nO'Ryan's fiddle pops, and hiccoughs\nback to this, back to this, back to this:\na napping snowman with a fiddlecase;\na flask of bootleg under his belt;\nthree stars; a gramophone on a pushbike; \na cigarette's glow from a far field;\nover and over, three bars in common time.