Tusitala

(‘Interviewing’ Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa)

It was not the place of my birth that I loved,
nor the trail of her smoke nor the sun on the Forth,
nor the dark of her light nor her half-light,

but this land I have found
and the splash and the roar of her sea

where the women take the hair from their heads
to weave bamboo-grass mosaics
and the ink dries on my pen as I write.

I stand now on a hillside
by the sweet vanilla planted
and her people are my people.

I remember, now and then,
the pale light of the North:
its soot-black towers
and razored dusk-black steeples
etched out in silhouette
and the counterpane coughed red
as I lay in bed, dreaming
paper-chains of islands in my head.

It was not the place of my birth that I loved
but this land I have found
where they call me Tusitala
and I breathe with the sea.

After a portrait of R.L.Stevenson
in Samoa, by Count Girolamo Nerli (1892),
Scottish National Portrait Gallery.