The windmill is early on and then, if I remember,
the dusty plain where many readers close the book.
I haven’t read it since that winter on the road
selling allsorts and jelly babies.
In a place in La Mancha I do not wish to recall
in a hotel near Newcastle, I started reading
alongside a buyer scouring white fields
for red cabbage that could be got from frozen ground,
a rep selling bull semen and a conference
of Swedish dentists, one scolding me for rotting
children’s teeth with lakritzkonfekt, another insisting
on the beauty of sleeping in the snow.

In Edinburgh I was more than halfway through,
pestered by the rep selling jugs saying Arbroath
and nickel teaspoons with Kirkcaldy on the handle
so when you stir your tea you wonder at the power
of romance, wonder why you ever bought them,
then by the other rep who used to fumble
shop assistants, but had a heart condition now,
no sex, no smokes, no drink,
his final pleasure night-driving to track cats-eyes
through the waste of time. Hey, why are you reading?
There’s a film on. It’s less the story
I remember than their endless suffering.

In the hotel no one could bear to see me reading,
everyone desperate for company.
I went to watch Dundee playing Wraith Rovers
in the snow. Give me the dusty plain.
Where my copy’s gone’s a mystery,
its cover a Daumier painting, hollow-eyed nag
and a knight in the saddle. The night shift at Uddingston,
all women, asked to be locked in till morning.
The boss, posh Scot with fine blue veins around
his temples, smiled and goosed me. I got the territory
no one wanted and turned the final page
in Leadhills. That’s how the quest for Dulcinea is.