A year since last I saw your green fields
And woods, your rock-bound purple seas,
O Alba, sad dark land, hollowed out,
Unpeopled, strangled by the dead white hand.
O land of empty churches, broad skulls
Of kings, holy islands, gutters filled
With piss and broken glass, tall dark lands.
Granite markers covered with war-dead names
One-handed taxi drivers, discontented Saxon
Tourists, money-flush Americans, apartment
Blocks filled with lonely old people and refugees,
Crumbling towers beside the shining loch.
Rain comes, the flood comes, yesterday comes
Tomorrow and tomorrow, brings overdoses in the heart
Of enlightenment and reason, in the shadow
Of your bright grey-brown cities.
Where are your burning saints - nothing remains
But initials in the pavement, eyes looking out from
The stones. Where are your eagles of remembrance,
The salmon of wisdom, your otters and foxes?
Where your reindeer and your wolves?
Where are your burned forests, forgotten woods?
Where the clans of miraculous little birds?
Where your holy women singing as they churn?
Your holy men praying as they fish and farm,
Filling the earth, speaking in vanishing fiery tongues?
Where are your holy children, playing among angels?
How are your chanted prayers fallen silent,
Your holy stones veiled by time’s deep hazelraw
Your holy women have gone shopping
Your holy men bow before the Sabbath football
The prayer of your birdsong is blurred by muttering
Traffic, the light of your remembrance hidden
Like stars in a neon-smudged sky.
Your cities are filled with sorrow
Your country is emptied, held by a foreign hand,
The rich add house to house and field to field.
Walk over the land and see the foundations
Of the old houses, ghosts of phantom feannagans
Abandoned boat houses facing an empty sea
Abandoned hopes as life turns to drudgery
Abandoned mountains, islands bombed and poisoned,
Filled with eternal waste and plagues.
Young men cannon fodder, abandoned to junk and porn
Young women made objects, abandoned when worn.
O bird fly free at last
O tree send forth long dormant blossoms
O bell ring out and chase away the ghosts
O salmon return to your old streams
May Alba flourish!
By the preaching of the good Word
By the praising of the holy Name
By the lifting of old burdens of injustice
By the opening of dried-up springs
Through remembrance of old songs and new
Through the sentimental kail yard to new poetry
Through shortbread-tin religion to old prayers prayed anew
Through the lost imagined past to a human future
Through lingering twilight death to a living morning.
Author: Duncan MacNae
Exiled Gael, scion of the Dust Bowl, dweller within Divine Grace, admirer of mountains, I have made my peace with trout and the starlings. Looking for a river and healing trees.
duncanmacduncan5@gmail.com
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