He’s come for the pipe-band,
being just big enough
to put on his sporran.
My son is a scrap
of his own tartan:
he is all kilt, save for his brown knees
and the bloodied old scars on them.
It’s his everyday kilt, but here, today,
it makes a tourist trample through the crowd:
She fires the camera, conspires
to steal his virtue into a picture.
He flashes a dour and warring glance
that must be perfect for her.
Now that it’s taken, he ought
to spring to life,
flash out a knife,
ask for her money or the negative.
Yet he must know
that will develop into something
different from the youthful Lachlan.
No,
the negative will show
a stony moor,
a twisted tree,
and all around them
the ragged map
of Scotland.
1990
The rock punctuates the sealine.
Our boat circles the Bass.
Seals swim beneath us,
pop fruit-machine heads up
three at a time, outstare us.
lean to starboard all at once.
We lurch below the cliffs.
On their dung-yellow rock,
gannets rest a beak-stab apart.
1995
Seeing the wind
before the storm
the king watched Fillan’s
miraculous arm
float on its own
through the silver case
till the arm-bone
clakkit into place.
Scotland’s pride
at Bannockburn shown,
what mountain hides
his holy bone?
Our saint, our Fillan,
our fate transform,
seeing the wind
before the storm.
1995
Athol of knolls and forests, of whitewater rapids,
India of woods and mountains, of wild waterfalls,
As Athol to Karnataka, as Tummel to Cauvery,
Down the mountain passes and out into the strath
Valleys of the Mysore highlands lead into Karnataka,
Snow-fed or monsoon-fed, their rivers are ready.
Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore, is India’s hero,
Archie Fergusson’s brow marked with his sabre-scar,
As Athol to Karnataka, as Tummel to Cauvery,
Between the two highlanders there’s a similarity:
Days of fortunes made by men who risked everything,
So Tipu to Archie, well-matched adversaries.
It’s all foretold on the cross-slab carved here
Where two beasts are fighting, a tiger and a hound,
As Athol to Karnataka, as Tummel to Cauvery,
Where the swimming elephant incised by the Pict
Is the herd crossing Cauvery, gun-batteries six by six,
Tooth to tooth, claw to claw, Tipu to Archie.
Tipu had a full view of the line as it passed,
Seven miles long, looking down on him from the heights:
Stronghold to stronghold, Seringapatam to Dunfallandy.
Now Archie’s house on its own bend of the river
Faces a continuous conveyor-belt of sound and colour,
The endless column moving on the dual carriageway.
As Athol to Karnataka, as Tummel to Cauvery,
No Tipu, no Archie disrupts the march today.
General Archibald Fergusson of Dunfallandy was with the
East India Company from 1776 till he returned to Scotland
in 1814. He received a sabre-wound on the forehead at the
storming of Seringapatam in the Anglo–Mysore war of
1799, where his adversary was the great Tipu Sultan.
1995