The Auld Fowks’ Hame
Devaul at the front yett
Press the bell an wyte
Weir yer anti-covid mask
The nurse’ll lat ye in.
The lichts are on aa day,
Like gloamin time, sae cosy
The heatin’s a hett dwaum
The merchandise dwines easy
There’s a faint guff o pee
There is a rowth o zimmers
Cerclin like cowboy waggons
Bit nae a fear o ony steer
Daith causes a minor stooshie
Curtains hap the corp
The body’s wheeched awa upon a trolly
The unnertakkers are baith faist an skeely
Puckles o fowk are sleepin
Heids sidiewyes they slump like thrappled chuckens
Aabody weirs bauchles ower their bunions
Time fur tay an pieces,
The rattle o speens in cups
The veesitors hae gaen
Back tae their ain consarns
The consarns o the leevin
Slawly, the fees o the Hame ett up
Fit’s left o ony inheritance
The option is tae dae the darg thirsels
The sleepless nights, the Altzheimers, the hippens
The parents they leave ahin
Are in Daith’s wytin room
Auld Annie’s in her cheer, her heid draps doon
Time fur her peels, teeth in a joog, her goun.
About this poem
This poem was included in Best Scottish Poems 2022. Best Scottish Poems is an online publication, which includes 5 poems written in Scots, 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 for poetry in Scots in 2022 was W. N. Herbert.
Editor’s note:
While a couple o the satiric poems from last year cairried their occasion wi them (ye hud tae read historically), Sheena Blackhall’s ‘The Auld Folks’ Hame’ braks through intae something at aince o its moment and mair universal. The thochtless, banal cruelty o hou auld folk were treated during the Pandemic and the wey it revealed hou carelessly we cram ‘them’ awa in homes labelled wi the epithet ‘Care’ wi neither conscious irony nor ony sense that will be us in due course – aa this is implicit in the brutal frankness o ‘The merchandise dwines easy’ or ‘Daith causes a minor stooshie’. Key to this is sma touches at top and tail: the brief mention of the visitor’s mask; the swoop into portraiture that taks us frae ‘merchandise’ and ‘parents’ to a named individual, Annie, aboot tae be processed, locating her alienation in the very hameliness o the leid : ‘Time fur her peels, teeth in a joug, her goun.’
Author’s note:
With the storyteller Jackie Ross, I was funded to visit several North East care homes to storytell and sing two years ago, despite being old enough to qualify as a resident. We were not always well received. One old lady kept repeating: ‘Fan are they leavin? Are they nae feenished yet?’ Several nodded off during the session.
Part of the poem tapped into memories of visiting my mother in a nursing home, and in hospital. In her case the difference in quality of care between private and NHS was staggering. She was hospitalized suffering malnutrition, depression, bed sores, from very expensive private care to an NHS nursing care situation. Thereafter, she was taken into town by nurses for shopping trips, like Lazarus rising from the dead. An odd side effect was, she fell in love with a young male nurse. However, physically, she was too frail to pursue any advances.
