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  • Brooklyn Cop
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Brooklyn Cop

Norman MacCaig

Built like a gorilla but less timid,
thick-fleshed, steak-coloured, with two
hieroglyphs in his face that mean
trouble, he walks the sidewalk and the
thin tissue over violence. This morning,
when he said, ‘See you, babe’ to his wife,
he hoped it, he truly hoped it.
He is a gorilla
to whom ‘Hiya, honey’ is no cliché.

Should the tissue tear, should he plunge through
into violence, what clubbings, what
gunshots between Phoebe’s Whamburger
and Louie’s Place.

Who would be him, gorilla with a nightstick,
whose home is a place
he might, this time, never get back to?

And who would be who have to be
his victims?


Norman MacCaig

from Norman MacCaig: Collected Poems, Chatto & Windus, 1993.

Tags:

America English guns heroes & villains jobs police portraits Scotland SQA Higher texts SQA National 5 texts violence

Learning Resources

SQA Key: National 5        Higher
  • Brooklyn Cop by Norman MacCaig

    Our notes for this set text should help teachers and students alike.
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Norman MacCaig1910 - 1996

A poet who divided his life and the attention of his poetry between Assynt in the West Highlands, and the city of Edinburgh, Norman MacCaig combined ‘precise observation with creative wit’,  and wrote with a passion for clarity.
More about Norman MacCaig

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