Echo: Dropt Sapphics - by
Handscroll
Poems about love from the Scottish Poetry Library online collection.
Handscroll
Whatever the difference is, it all began
the day we woke up face-to-face like lovers
and his four-day-old smile dawned on him again…
In the house where he sleeps
let my ears
be the leaves at the window.
Caitean air uachdar Loch Eiriosort
/ ’s an t-anmoch ann,
/ bha an latha samraidh fada,
/ gruth is bàrr a’ coinneachadh:
/ tha an gaol a leanas…
Here is a letter
/ come across the ocean
/ over the back of a world
/ curved like a whale.
/ I unwrap it, like tissue,
/ and sentences…
Love has been loitering
/ down this corridor
/ has been seen
/ chatting up out-patients
/ spinning the wheels of wheelchairs
/ fluttering the pulse of the night nurse
/ appearing,…
Loch an Iomair’s my treasure, cradled in sphagnum /high in the hills between arms of rock / with lobelia pricking…
I love you because you love Harris tweed,
/ How it’s several times slumped into bankruptcy,
/ Business plans hauled back from the dead,
/ Only…
Waking in the small hours the night
/ before you go into hospital, you press
/ the palm of my hand to your cheek
/ so…
Oh wert thou in the cauld blast,
/ On yonder lea, on yonder lea;
/ My plaidie to the angry…
Na cluinneam nach eil subh-làir
/ agad air fhàgail sa bhùth;
/ tha mo ghaol-sa gam feitheamh,
/ …
In the beginning Love satisfies us.
/ When Love first spoke to me of love –
/ How I laughed at her in return!…