Fierce pins plough her hair
You can tell by the angry drag
of the net
that once she was beautiful,
envied and glad of it
The nightingale of the county,
electrifying the village halls
She told me she wore winged hats
tall as gladioli,
and the hanging moon sang with her,
and how they clapped and horded
at her doors
When she went,
she went like the old bunch, cursing,
blue as smoke,
you could almost smell the burning
(Oh, they were a wild lot, the Johnstones,
border raiders,
horse stealers setting the Kirk alight
and all their enemies inside)
With her heart tattered
she begged for morphine
and to be done with it,
to be gone among the gliding dead
She glints now in the gooseberry bushes,
her broom hisses out at low-dashing cats
In the night she slaps up her window
and hurls hairbrushes
1984
Outside, time and famous dates passed –
Korea Suez Cuba Algeria all cannoned by
casually as a slap on the back.
In the butcher’s and the grocer’s,
not a word of them. No, only talk of
the sun, snow, seasons;
stillbirths, new banns posted;
the harvest, the Gala,
the Foot and Mouth which closed farm roads,
the Compensation.
As for violence, we had our own –
a thousand cattle burned in pits
a labourer, demented, raped a child
fine swimmers drowned in the loch’s depths.
And most Saturdays some girl’s wedding
brought the women clattering
down the High Street – they’d bang
on doors along the way and put up the cry,
then hang back respectfully and squint
at the hired cars, the ceremonial clothes.
My mother, her mother’s mother
were brides like these,
country brides teetering up
the gravel-chipped path to the Kirk,
shielding their new shoes from scrapes.
By the sandstone wall, photos were posed,
against a bleak swell of lowland hills;
the photos show puckered faces
and a wind which whips the stiff bouquets.
The dances came and went, and fashions;
my girlfriends and I – in tight skirts
(or tiered), beads which popped
and hooped net petticoats –
crushed into cars and choked
on our own close scent, and smoke, and compliments.
But soon they sobered and they planned –
knitted cardigans all summer, by January
scanned the catalogues for cottons,
drab (for work), dressy (for holidays).
I saw them smooth
and full-blown dreaming of marriage
when I was still pockmarked with envy
and a thousand wants. I became crazy:
I’ll be an artist’ I said
and bristled for the skirmish; quite slowly
their eyes scaled and their good sense
bunched against me.
‘That’s no’ for the likes o’ us.’
Elizabeth, Elaine, Rhoda of the long legs,
all matrons, mothering, hurrying
their men to work at 7 am.
Now hunched round prams,
what landmarks of content do they stake out
As tractors streak the fields with lime
and all the old women, hushed,
move to the funeral to see the flowers.
1984
Scottish morning: grey
glue of the porridge-pot
my grandmother left soaking
After years of exile
you forget how the hill sheep
run from the train
Perthshire summer: in the railway
siding, snowploughs
rust among the lupins
Aperitifs on the terrace?
This house
needs a windbreak
1997