Hill follower, sun rose, much milk Twisted thread, dew robber, ragged robin Sad poor stitchwort, mouse’s ear Fairy woman’s flax, yellow swan Fly King, red wound healer, summer bloom (So far away) Sourock, sun broom, sookie, Mouse peas, crane’s pod, earth sap Useful giant, wave plant, grass rag, Little frog, shell bright, earth smoke Shore dainty, blue lad, the fearful Black thorny one, Thorn trees on every side, All sleeping under this weighted white Blanket
Two Ravens
Two ravens - One silent facing south Toward a poisoned land Land of unfulfilled dreams The other, massive bill Clacking, feathers raised along Its crest, looks north Looks toward a place That might yet be Unreal country The dead horse, human kind, The strangled river Sits in the middle Suspended animation Neither fond memory Nor bold plan But a space of stillness This moment building into power.
Dawn and Midnight
Is binn uiseasg ‘sa chamhanaich,ach ‘s binne coileach ‘sa mheadhon-oidche
Sweetly the lark greets the dawn Singing in the sunrise Securely taking her rightful place in the world But sweeter is the cock crowing at midnight Fierce, contentious, arrogant, Infringing on the swirling eddy of darkness, Driving away the ghosts.
Stone of the Past
Round river boulder of the past Heavy gray granite of history I claw at you, fingernails Scrabbling for purchase, shoulder Straining to keep you encircled In my grasp, palms pressing Rugosities friction heaving the weight Past my knees. Why lift this heavy stone? This smooth stone of history best Perhaps to let it lie forgotten in the willows By the dark river I lift it because it is the stone Of my heart, unfading realization Wordless in the pit of my stomach Sense of belonging to a wronged people Refusal to take the thin soup And forget. I lift the stone because to let it lie Forgotten in the willows Is to lose my own life, to be lost Forever to my people, to forget Is to forsake the solemn dignity Of a stolen past. I lift the stone because of the anger In my heart, rage in my head and heart Driving me relentless to clear away Spoils of burned houses, abandoned False dreams like old cars on the side Of a scabland road, twisted roots of lies, Rocks of hate clogging the life-springs of my people. My people! Atavistic phrase, worrying Politicians and historians, raising visions Of new nations perpetuating old wrongs But hot-headed I proclaim that there was Nothing but the general human condition To be ashamed of in our stolen past Much to love, much to mourn And the time when the big city taxi driver Threw the Nova Scotia boatbuilder out of the cab When, accustomed to the open air, The git spat his chaw full on the San Francisco isinglass window And his kids with their mismatched shoes To walk across foggy hills. Let sadness follow upon sadness, Song follow on song, stone rest upon stone.
An t-Alba Nuadh
New Scotland waiting to be born These letters are for you, my love To you, country of the empty mountains Land of abandonment, I sing for you in exile Your sky slashing sgurrs golden days on silver beaches Stir my heart Ancient oak woods of my soul - Fallen strength filling memory. From far away in a hard white land Far, very far, from the song of your Waves and eternal wind I send you an exile’s fanatic love. I sing you dreams of republic and a hundred Thousand farms, long vanished, alive still Under the stones of old crofts Burning still under the dark water Singing still in the buttery wind That shakes the end of your long winter All the desperate hopes of this dwindling age Come to fruition on your bracken yellow hills Alba nuadh, new Scotland of my heart, Waiting to be born.
A Letter from America
Here is the letter you asked for in the pop song (Fichead bliadnha, twenty years ago, thirty – I’m sorry I took so long – I didn’t know where you lived) Here in the rainy dawn filled with wounding words Old wrongs, the rain drumming cadences Of the lost work songs War of wind in the branches, almost I can hear The children singing clattering pebbles in the surf Mouth music lilting list of the places we fled No more, no more, no more Mournful refrain in the rainy spring daybreak. Here is the letter you asked for in your song. Here are the times, sweet sheltered places In the sagebrush, exposés of fading farm towns Memoranda of the drowned lands, the fleeing People settled down, until dust and wind Drive us on again. Here is the résumé of our fears Secret dispatches from the land of promise Promised land, land of the big idea, Land of the second chance installment plan Here is the catalog of our tears Fond recollection of the vanished place Tedious remembrances of trudging Dusty roads possessions pressing sweaty Against our backs Here is the burden of our hope Here is the letter you asked for in your song.
Letters from America
Poems for a new Scotland, filled with promise, from a land full of promises.
Whatever Scotland is to me Be it aye pairt o’ a’ men see O’ Earth and o’ Eternity Wha winna hide their heids in’t till It seems the haill o’ Space to fill As ‘twere an unsurmounted hill. He canna Scotland see wha yet Canna see the Infinite And Scotland in true scale to it. From “A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle”, Hugh MacDiarmid
The south and the west looked on and the moon came
When the wind went down and the sea was sorry
And the singing slow.
Ask how the sunset looked between the wind going
Down and the moon coming up and I would struggle
To tell the how of it.
I give you fire here, I give you water, I give you
The wind that blew them across and across
The scooping mixing wind.
From “How Yesterday Looked”, Carl Sandburg
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