Dream Cities
I
Glasgow, late September and the city I spoke of
in another country (its fierce sandstone
burning, its bombast of finials built on the heads of slaves
the monumental tower blocks of a later order
catching fire from the west as a plane comes in)
has become in two months
a dream a nostalgia
For it is litter not grandeur
a muddied disturbance in a dirty river
a sullen reflection sliced by concrete
(the monumental pillars
and glorious boulevards of a later order)
Against the vivifying light
of the south the suburban avenues
of a world of space it is rain
rain and old world pallor
and beyond it
on the high points of Aonach Mor and Ben Nevis
(so early a door closing and opening)
the first snows of the winter
II
Early November and the city I parted from
in two months has become a dream technicolour
not quite Auckland or Christchurch
but a dream place of skyscrapers and heady blossom
stern waxy magnolia silk of almond and crab apple
A dream place but Christchurch as it was then
in mid-September Jane driving me to the airport
past gardens reeking with nectar
for there Spring has continued without me
And here I wake no longer at home
About this poem
This poem was included in Best Scottish Poems 2014. Best Scottish Poems is an online publication, consisting of 20 poems chosen by a different editor each year, with comments by the editor and poets. It provides a personal overview of a year of Scottish poetry. The editor in 2014 was Roderick Watson.
Author's note:
‘Dream Cities’ is a poem about the way places change in our imagination and memory, and in dream. It was written in the aftermath of a visit home to New Zealand when I had lived long enough in Scotland to have put down roots; and it was written in two distinct parts, symbolic perhaps of the split all of us must feel who belong to two countries.
It is a poem of shifting viewpoints, lit by southern hemisphere light and by Glasgow's red sandstone; and shadowed both by the Antipodean sense of Europe as the old world, the dark of history, and by the literal dark of the coming Scottish winter.
It is also a poem whose meanings have changed since the time of its writing. The earthquakes which hit Christchurch tore apart the city I remember. The poem’s paradisal dream place no longer exists.
