The Greenock Dialogues

I

O Greenock, Greenock, I never will

Get back to you. But here I am,

The boy made good into a ghost

Which I will send along your streets

Tonight as the busy nightshifts

Hammer and spark their welding lights.

I pull this skiff I made myself

Across the almost midnight firth

Between Greenock and Kilkreggan.

My blades as they feather discard

The bright drops and the poor word

Which will always drown unheard.

Ah the little whirlpools go

Curling away for a moment back

Into my wake. Brigit. Cousin

Brigit Mooney, are you still there

On the Old Custom House shore?

You need not answer that, my dear.

And she is there with all the wisps

And murmers in their far disguise.

Brigit, help with the boat up

Up over the shingle to the high

Tide mark. You’ve hardly changed, only

A little through the word’s eye.

Take my hand this new night

And we’ll go up to Cartsburn Street.

My poor father frightened to go

Down the manhole might be in.

Burns’ Mary sleeps fine in

Inverkip Street far from Afton.

And here’s the close, Brigit. My mother

Did those stairs a thousand times.

The top-flat door, my father’s name

Scrived by his own hand in brass.

We stand here scrived on the silence

Under the hissing stairhead gas.

II

I (Who shall I be?) call across

The shore-side where like iron filings

The beasts of the tide are taken through

Their slow whirls between the words.

Where are you now, dear half-cousin

Brigit with your sandprints filling

In the Western, oystercatching morning?

This is a real place as far

As I am concerned. Come down over

The high-tide bladder-wrack and step

Over the gunwale of our good skiff.

I lean back on the bright blades

To move us out on language over

The loch in the morning, iodine air.

Abstract beasts in a morning mirror

By memory teased very far

Out of their origins. Where where

Shall I take us as the little whirl

Pools leave the blade and die back?

The house is shrinking. Yeats’ hazel

Wood writes in a dwindling style.

From where I pull and feather I see

You dearly pulled towards me yet

Not moving nearer as we both

Move out over the burnished loch.

Move with the boat and keep us trim.

If it is a love we have, then it

Is only making it now, Brigit.

III

I am not trying to hide

Anything anything anything.

My half-cousin Brigit

With me rowed over the loch

And we pulled the skiff up

Up over the bladder

Wrack of the high tide

And climbed the Soor Duik ladder.

Ben Narnain is as good

A shape as any Ben

And I liked Ben Narnain

And half-cousin Brigit.

Remember she was only half

A cousin and not het.

These words play us both

About that time yet.

All this is far too

Innocently said.

I write this down to get her

Somewhere between the words.

You yourself can contribute

Somewhere between the words

If it does you any good.

I know what I climb towards.

Is that not (Will you say?)

Is that not right, Brigit?

With your naked feet printing

The oystercatching sand?

Shall I come back to Scotland,

My ear seeking the sound

Of what your words on the long

Loch have put in my mind.

After the bracken the open

Bare scree and the water

Ouzel and looking down

At the long loch. It was

I suppose fine but nothing

Now as the wind blows

Across the edge of Narnain

And the Soor Duik burn flows.

IV

There are various ways to try to speak

And this is one. Cousin Brigit,

Sit steady. Keep us trim

And I will pull us out over

The early morning firth between

Kilkreggan and Greenock. I’ll put my blades

Easily with all my sleight into

My home waters not to distort

The surface from its natural sound.

Behind your head, where I can see,

The sleeping warrior lies along

The Arran hills. Steady, Brigit,

If you would ride the clinkered skiff

And see the little whirlpools scooped

Into their quick life and go

Sailing away astern. O help

To keep me headed into the fair

And loud forest of high derricks

And welding lights blue in the sun.

Whoever you are you are; keep

Us trimmed and easy as we go

Gliding at each stroke through

The oily shipbuilding approaches.

We are here to listen. We are here

To hear the town in the disguise

My memory puts on it. Brigit

Is with me. Her I know. I put

Her in between the lines to love

And be alive in particulars.

Brigit, dear broken-song-tongued bag,

I’ll not be jilted again. I see

You younger now this morning, urged

Towards me as I put my back

Into the oars and as I lean

Towards you feathering the dripping blades,

I think almost you are more mine

Than his who was before. Remember

Your name is Brigit Mooney, kin

To Malcolm in his slowly moving

Ultramarine cell of ice.

Brigit, take me with you and who

Ever it is who reads himself into

Our presence here in this doubtful

Curious gesture. Come, step over

The gunwale. I think, it seems we’re here

On the dirty pebbles of my home

Town Greenock where somewhere Burns’ Mary

Sleeps and John Galt’s ghosts go

Still in the annals of their parish