I look at him and I say
There’s a man who’s broken
his nose once or twice, eyes like
cut-steel rivets, stiff lower lip edgy over
Vermeer-strobed gingersnap strands and—
that wild tawny thicket afly against
a soft Guinness scenario, an allusion
of khaki (a flirtation of shoulder,
mind you), something military maybe:
an intimation of risk or a nod
to some rebel hero—says I though,
Never mind that auld jut o’
fierceness—say what you like,
there’s a man who can write.