I’ve lost a lot of things worth while my pleasure and my fun,
And the days of my captivity pass slowly one by one,
But as I sit in loneliness, each day more plain I see,
My body may be captive but my heart and mind are free.
He minded dem getting torpedoed i da White Sea,
hit blew da boo clean aff.
Da Bulksheid, he held though an dey limpit inta Arcangel,
whaur shu wis lashed ta da peir, an micht still be dere yet.
Harder
to find in the soundscape is our man,
the bell of his horn sanctifying the notes
in remembrance, or joy that the damned
thing is over
Now over the map that took ten million years
/ Of rain and sun to crust like boiler-slag,
/ The lines of fighting men…
Ten thousand bullets fired,
/ all the angry wasps in the world,
/ and devil the one to sting me:
/ I’m the lucky…
You were being driven down to Prague
/ when a fellow in blue dungarees started shooting
/ so you stood up beside the chauffeur…
September 1st, 1939.
/
/ Cicalas burst the air, a heat-haze quivers
/ on the pale plain, the glittering…
Standan here on a fogg-yirdit stane,
/ drappan the bricht flees on the broun spate,
/ I’m thinkan o ye, liggan thonder…
’S mi air an t-slios ud
/ latha foghair,
/ na sligean a’ sianail mum chluasan
/ agus sianar marbh ri mo ghualainn,
/ rag-mharbh – is reòthta…
(The series of 47 soliloquies is about the women left behind on the
/ Isle of Barra during the Second World…
Dawn breaks and I discover myself
/ On top of a wall much higher than I imagined
/ Which is on top of a…
‘A-a-ll the starboard watch!’
/ ‘Shairly no again!
/ What’s the wather like?’
/ ‘Cauld, wi sleet and rain.’
/
/ ‘Lofty. Depth-charge sentry.
/ Knocker. You’re stand-by.
/ Haggis. On the gun.
/ Shorty.
