In The Eyes, Don Paterson has used the work of the great Spanish poet Antonio Machado (1875-1939) to create what might be called a spiritual portrait. Lying somewhere between translation and imitation, these poems show Machado to have possessed a sensibility and philosophical bent strikingly pertinent to the problems of our own time. The Eyes is as ingenious in its conception and as direct in its impact as anything Don Paterson has ever written.