Enclosing Arthur’s soul, is seen no more
Wheeling and calling over the Cornish cliffs.
Old Tod has vacated his deep-dug earth;
He has gone to rummage in the city dustbins.
Tiggy is squashed flat on the M1.
‘My delicate deer are culled, and on offshore islands
My sleek silkies, where puffin and guillemot
Smother and drown in oil and tar.
The mechanical reaper has guillotined
Ortygometra, though she was no traitor,
Crouching over her cradle – no longer resounds
Crek-crek, crek-crek, among the wheatfields,
Where the scarlet cockle is missing and the blue cornflower.
My orchids and wild hyacinths are raped and torn,
My lenten lilies and my fritillaries.
Less frequent now the debate
Of cuckoo and nightingale – and where is the cuckoo’s maid,
The snake-necked bird sacred to Venus,
Her mysteries and the amber twirling wheel?
In no brightness of air dance now the butterflies –
Their hairy mallyshags are slaughtered among the nettles.
The innocent bats are evicted from the belfries,
The death-watch remains, and masticates history.
‘I’ll leave to the people of England
All that remains:
Rags and patches – a few old tales
And bawdy jokes, snatches of song and galumphing dance-steps.
Above all my obstinacy – obstinacy of flintstones
That breed in the soil, and pertinacity
Of unlovely weeds – chickweed and groundsel,
Plantain, shepherd’s purse and Jack-by-the-hedge.
Let them keep it as they wander in the inhuman towns.
‘And the little children, imprisoned in ogrish towers, enchanted
By a one-eyed troll in front of a joyless fire –
I would have them remember the old games and the old dances:
Sir Roger is dead, Sir Roger is dead,
She raised him up under the apple tree;
Poor Mary is a-weeping, weeping like Ariadne,
Weeping for her husband on a bright summer’s day.’
JOHN HEATH-STUBBS
Thoughts after Ruskin
Women reminded him of lilies and roses.
Me they remind rather of blood and soap,
Armed with a warm rag, assaulting noses,
Ears, neck, mouth and all the secret places:
Armed with a sharp knife, cutting up liver,
Holding hearts to bleed under a running tap,
Gutting and stuffing, pickling and preserving,
Scalding, blanching, broiling, pulverising,
– All the terrible chemistry of their kitchens.
Their distant husbands lean across mahogany
And delicately manipulate the market,
While safe at home, the tender and the gentle
Are killing tiny mice, dead snap by the neck,
Asphyxiating flies, evicting spiders,
Scrubbing, scouring aloud, disturbing cupboards,
Committing things to dustbins, twisting, wringing,
Wrists red and knuckles white and fingers puckered,
Pulpy, tepid. Steering screaming cleaners
Around the snags of furniture, they straighten
And haul out sheets from under the incontinent
And heavy old, stoop to importunate young,
Tugging, folding, tucking, zipping, buttoning,
Spooning in food, encouraging excretion,
Mopping up vomit, stabbing cloth with needles,
Contorting wool around their knitting needles,
Creating snug and comfy on their needles.
Their huge hands! their everywhere eyes! their voices
Raised to convey across the hullabaloo,
Their massive thighs and breasts dispensing comfort,
Their bloody passages and hairy crannies,
Their wombs that pocket a man upside down!
And when all’s over, off with overalls,
Quickly consulting clocks, they go upstairs,
Sit and sigh a little, brushing hair,
And somehow find, in mirrors, colours, odours,
Their essences of lilies and of roses.
ELMA MITCHELL
Midge
The evening is perfect, my sisters.
The loch lies silent, the air is still.
The sun’s last rays linger over the water
and there is a faint smirr, almost a smudge
of summer rain. Sisters, I smell supper,
and what is more perfect than supper?
It is emerging from the wood,
in twos and threes, a dozen in all,
making such a chatter and a clatter
as it reaches the rocky shore,
admiring the arrangements of the light.
See the innocents, my sisters,
the clumsy ones, the laughing ones,
the rolled-up sleeves and the flapping shorts,
there is even a kilt (the god of the midges,
you are good to us!). So gather your forces,
leave your tree trunks, forsake the rushes,
fly up from the sour brown mosses
to the seek flesh of face and forearm.
Think of your eggs. What does the egg need?
Blood, and blood. Blood is what the egg needs.
Our men have done their bit, they’ve gone,
it was all they were good for, poor dears. Now
it is up to us. The egg is quietly screaming
for supper, blood, supper, blood, supper!
Attack, my little Draculas, my Amazons!
Look at those flailing arms and stamping feet.
They’re running, swatting, swearing, oh they’re hopeless.
Keep at them, ladies. This is a feast,
this is a midsummer night’s dream.
Soon we shall all lie down filled and rich,
and lay, and lay, and lay, and lay, and lay.
EDWIN MORGAN
Sir James Murray
I pick a daimen icker from the thrave
And chew it thoughtfully. I must be brave
And fight for this. My English colleagues frown
But words come skelpin rank and file, and down
They go, the kittle kimmers, they’re well caught
And I won’t give them up. Who would have thought
A gleg and gangrel Scot like me should barge
Or rather breenge, like a kelpie at large
In the Cherwell, upon the very palladium
Of anglophilia? My sleekit radium
Is smuggled through the fluttering steps. My shed,
My outhouse with it’s thousand-plus well-fed
Pigeon-holes, has a northern exposure. Doon
Gaed stumpie in the ink all afternoon,
As Burns and I refreshed the dictionar
With cantrips from his dancing Carrick star!
O lovely words and lovely man! We’ll caw
Before as yowes tae knowes; we’ll shaw the braw
Auld baudrons by the ingle; we’ll comb
Quotations to bring the wild whaup safely home.
Origin obscure? Origin uncertain? Origin unknown?
I love those eldritch pliskies that are thrown
At as from a too playful past, a store
Of splore we should never be blate to semaphore!
Oxford! here is a silent collieshangie
To spike your index-cards and keep them tangy.
Some, though not I, will jib at houghmagandy:
We’ll maybe not get that past Mrs Grundy
– But evening comes. To work, to work! To words!
The ban are turning into bauckie-birds.
The light in my scriptorium flickers gamely.
Pioneers must never labour tamely
.
We steam along, we crawl, we pause, we hurtle,
And stir this English porridge with a spurtle.
EDWIN MORGAN
Canedolia
an off-concrete scotch fantasia
oa! hoy! awe! ba! mey!
who saw?
rhu saw rum. garve saw smoo. nigg saw tain. lairg saw lagg.
rigg saw eigg. largs saw haggs. tongue saw luss. mull saw yell.
stoer saw strone. drem saw muck. gask saw noss. unst saw cults.
echt saw banff. weem saw wick. trool saw twatt.
how far?
from largo to lunga from joppa to skibo from ratho to shona
from ulva to minto from tinto to tolsta from soutra to marsco
from braco to barra from alva to stobo from fogo to fada from
gigha to gogo from kelso to stroma from hirta to spango.
what is it like there?
och it’s freuchie, it’s faifley, it’s wamphray, it’s frandy, it’s
sliddery.
what do you do?
we foindle and fungle, we bonkle and meigle and maxpoffle. we
scotstarvit, armit, wormit, and even wifflet. we play at crosstobs,
leuchars, gorbals and finfan. we scavaig, and there’s aye a bit of
tilquhilly. if it’s wet, treshnish and mishnish.
what is the best of the country?
blinkbonny! airgold! thundergay!
and the worst?
scrishven, shiskine, scrabster, and snizort.
listen! what’s that?
catacol and wauchope, never heed them
tell us about last night
well, we had a wee ferintosh and we lay on the quiraing. it was
pure strontian!
but who was there?
petermoidart and craigenkenneth and cambusputtock and
ecclemuchty and corriehulish and balladolly and altnacanny
and clauchanvrechan and stronachlochan and auchenlachar and
tighnacrankie and tilliebruaich and killieharra and invervannach
and achnatudlem and machrishellach and inchtamurchan and
auchterfechan and kinlochculter and ardnawhallie and inver-
shuggle
and what was the toast?
schiehallion! schiehallion! schiehallion!
EDWIN MORGAN
Barn Owl
Ernie Morgan found him, a small
Fur mitten inexplicably upright,
And hissing like a treble kettle
Beneath the tree he’d fallen from.
His bright eye frightened Ernie,
Who popped a rusty bucket over him
And ran for us. We kept him
In a backyard shed, perched
On the rung of a broken deck-chair,
Its canvas faded to his down’s biscuit.
Men from the pits, their own childhood
Spent waste in the crippling earth,
Held him gently, brought him mice
From the wealth of our riddled tenements,
Saw that we understood his tenderness,
His tiny body under its puffed quilt,
Then left us alone. We called him Snowy.
He was never clumsy. He flew
From the first like a skilled moth,
Sifting the air with feathers,
Floating it softly to the place he wanted.
At dusk he’d stir, preen, stand
At the window-ledge, fly. It was
A catching of the heart to see him go.
Six months we kept him, saw him
Grow beautiful in a way each thought
His own knowledge. One afternoon, home
With pretended illness, I watched him
Leave. It was daylight. He lifted slowly
Over the Hughes’s roof, his cream face calm,
And never came back. I saw this;
And tell it for the first time,
Having wanted to keep his mystery.
And would not say it now, but that
This morning, walking in Slindon woods
Before the sun, I found a barn owl
Dead in the rusty bracken.
He was not clumsy in his death,
His wings folded decently to him,
His plumes, unruffled orange,
Bore flawlessly their delicate patterning.
With a stick I turned him, not
Wishing to touch his feathery stiffness.
There was neither blood nor wound on him,
But for the savaged foot a scavenger
Had ripped. I saw the sinews.
I could have skewered them out
Like a common fowl’s. Moving away
I was oppressed by him, thinking
Confusedly that down the generations
Of air this death was Snowy’s
Emblematic messsenger, that I should know
The meaning of it, the dead barn owl.
LESLIE NORRIS
Water
On hot summer mornings my aunt set glasses
On a low wall outside the farmhouse,
With some jugs of cold water.
I would sit in the dark hail, or
Behind the dairy window,
Waiting for children to come from the town.
They came in small groups, serious, steady,
And I could see them, black in the heat,
Long before they turned in at our gate
To march up the soft, dim road.
They would stand by the wall,
Drinking water with an engrossed thirst. The dog
Did not bother them, knowing them responsible
Travellers. They held in quiet hands their bags
Of jam sandwiches, and bottles of yellow fizz.
Sometimes they waved a gratitude to the house,
But they never looked at us.
Their eyes were full of the mountain, lifting
Their measuring faces above our long hedge.
When they had gone I would climb the wall,
Looking for them among the thin sheep runs.
Their heads were a resolute darkness among ferns,
They climbed with unsteady certainty.
I wondered what it was they knew the mountain had.
They would pass the last house, Lambert’s, where
A violent gander, too old by many a Christmas,
Blared evil warning from his bitten moor,
Then it was open world, too high and clear
For clouds even, where over heather
The free hare cleanly ran and the summer sheep.
I knew this; and I knew all summer long
Those visionary gangs passed through our lanes,
Coming down at evening, their arms full
Of cowslips, moon daisies, whinberries, nuts,
All fruits of the sliding seasons,
And the enormous experience of the mountain
That I who loved it did not understand.
In the summer, dust filled our winter ruts
With a level softness, and children walked
At evening through golden curtains scuffed
From the road by their trailing feet.
They would drink tiredly at our wall, talking
Softly, leaning, their sleepy faces warm for home.
We would see them murmur slowly through our stiff
Gate, their shy heads gilded by the last sun.
One by one we would gather up the used jugs,
The glasses. We would pour away
A little water. It would lie on the thick dust, gleaming.
LESLIE NORRIS
Butter
Where has my butter gone? The
vanman, he took seven pounds
and a basket of warm eggs, for
jam, sugar, tea, paraffin. I
gave the tinkers a lump, to keep
this away, the black word from our
byre. I put some in the damp peats,
to
coax a flame. I swear the cat
has a yellow tongue. There was only
a scrape for the fisherman’s bannock
like a bit of sun on a dull day. The
old cow is giving me a mad look.
GEORGE MACKAY BROWN
Hamnavoe Market
They drove to the Market with ringing pockets.
Folster found a girl
Who put wounds on his face and throat,
Small and diagonal, like red doves.
Johnston stood beside the barrel.
All day he stood there.
He woke in a ditch, his mouth full of ashes.
Grieve bought a balloon and a goldfish.
He swung through the air,
He fired shotguns, rolled pennies, ate sweet fog from a stick.
Heddle was at the Market also.
I know nothing of his activities,
He is and always was a quiet man.
Garson fought three rounds with a negro boxer,
And received thirty shillings,
Much applause, and an eye loaded with thunder.
Where did they find Flett?
They found him in a brazen circle,
All flame and blood, a new Salvationist.
A gypsy saw in the hand of Halcro
Great strolling herds, harvests, a proud woman.
He wintered in the poorhouse.
They drove home from the Market under the stars
Except for Johnston
Who lay in a ditch, his mouth full of dying fires.
GEORGE MACKAY BROWN
Haddock Fishermen
Midnight. The wind yawing nor-east.
A low blunt moon.
Unquiet beside quiet wives we rest.
A spit of rain and a gull
The Map and the Clock Page 35
