Landscape and I get on together well.Though I’m the talkative one, still he can tellHis symptoms of being to me, the way a shellMurmurs of oceans.Loch Rannoch lapses dimpling in the sun.Its hieroglyphs of light fade one by oneBut re-create themselves, their message done,For ever and ever.That sprinkling lark jerked upward in the blueWill daze […]
She sits all day by the fire.How long is it since she opened the doorand stepped outside, confusingthe scuffling hens and the colliedreaming of sheep?Her walking days are over. She has come through centuriesof Gaelic labour and lovesand rainy funerals. Her peopleare assembled in her bones.She’s their summation. Before her timehas almost no meaning. When […]
On Lachie’s croft the cock standsunder the wheelbarrow. What’s wrong? – He’s bedraggled.Where are his military elegance, his gauleiter manners, his insufferable conceit?I’ll call him rooster, it seems more fitting.I, too, feel bedraggled and haphazard; somethinghas filched my compass, I’m breathing black air.I look at that rooster, I look at me.His hens scratch the ground, […]
A suspicion, a doubt, a jealousygrew in my mind,which turned the hairs on my head to filthy snakes,as though my thoughtshissed and spat on my scalp.My bride’s breath soured, stankin the grey bags of my lungs.I’m foul mouthed now, foul tongued,yellow fanged.There are bullet tears in my eyes.Are you terrified?Be terrified.It’s you I love,perfect man, […]
I’m ten years away from the corner you laugh onwith your pals, Maggie McGeeney and Jean Duff.The three of you bend from the waist, holdingeach other, or your knees, and shriek at the pavement.Your polka-dot dress blows round your legs. Marilyn. I’m not here yet. The thought of me doesn’t occurin the ballroom with the […]
Now westlin winds and slaught’ring gunsBring Autumn’s pleasant weather;The moorcock springs on whirring wingsAmang the blooming heather:Now waving grain, wide o’er the plain,Delights the weary farmer;And the moon shines bright, as I rove by night,To muse upon my charmer. The paitrick loves the fruitful fells,The plover loves the mountains;The woodcock haunts the lonely dells,The soaring […]
I can see da rüfs aa taekit, an da hens aroond da door;
Fok kerryin twartree paets hame, an rigs delled every voar.
True Thomas lay on Huntlie bank,A ferlie he spied wi’ his e’e;And there he saw a ladye brightCome riding down by the Eildon Tree.Her shirt was o’ the grass-green silk.Her mantle o’ the velvet fyne;At ilka tett of her horse’s maneHung fifty siller bells and nine.True Thomas, he pull’d aff his capAnd louted low down […]
Think of me as a long level
liquid ear gliding slowly by.
I heard the world’s words,
the pleas of peoples born
where my ships once sailed,
Stones, it won’t be sufficient
just to sit on your dowps and say ‘nay’.
Trees, don’t be waving your arms about
in some new breeze every day.
Great smouldering barque, your figurehead sings
into the dark, the death song of queens, of kings,
over sea birds that circle like faint rings of smoke
(for Leslie McGuire) The boy is ten and today it is his birthday.Behind him on the lawnhis mother and his little sisterunfurl a rainbow crayoned big and brighton a roll of old wallpaper.His father, big-eyed, mock-solemn, pantomimes ceremonyas he lights the ten candles on the cake.Inside her living-roomhis grandmother puts her open palm to the […]
