Day 7: Unicorn

Lucky no. 7, what better way to honour it than a poem about a magical mythic animal - an unicorn?

Here's a poem that can mean whatever you want it to mean. Here's a poem that can be whatever you want, or need, it to be.

To me, it's all about the power of the imagination. The power of belief. Our belief invests even the most fantastical of ideas with power. 

Don Paterson is a Scottish poet. You can read more on him here.


Unicorn - Don Paterson

This is the animal that never was.
Not knowing that, they loved it anyway;
its bearing, its stride, its high, clear whinny,
right down to the still light of its gaze.

It never was. And yet such was their love
the beast arose, where they had cleared the space;
and in the stable of its nothingness
it shook its white mane out and stamped its hoof.

And so they fed it, not with hay or corn
but with the chance that it might come to pass.
All this gave the creature such a power

its brow put out a horn; one single horn.
It grew inside a young girl’s looking glass,
then one day walked out and passed into her.