poetry

223d

The Decaying Emperor

Will he, won't he
Bomb #Iran ... again
To cover up his dirty crimes
Hidden in those Epstein files
The dastardly felon
Attacks and dictates
All laws ignored
Kills his own people
And still he squats
A poisonous toad
On imperial throne
Every day, another groan
The world on its knees
To feed the empire's endless greed
An economy running on fear
And the river of our tears.

Jinjirrie (Jan 2026)
#poetry #Trumpolini #USFascism
#AIart illustration by me.

The Decaying Emperor 4 (AI assisted illustration by me)

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219d

February dark is fields and fields long,
from this sill to the whin ridge and beyond,
wet as a dog’s nose, curious
where flame ticks against glass…

—Pippa Little, “Brown Nights”
published in nothing but a set of eyes for stars: New Writing Scotland 41 (ASL, 2023)

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/newwriting/nws41/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #February

Pippa Little
BROWN NIGHTS

Last summer, late, I filled your tea cup,
bone and gold, with melted wax:
it sits in its saucer now, lit
pale rose, sets corners fluttering
as my breath teases the wick –

February dark is fields and fields long,
from this sill to the whin ridge and beyond,
wet as a dog’s nose, curious
where flame ticks against glass,

wanting only a warm –
out there owl outflies a bullet
and stones stir to ease their aching.
All-invisible: yet I can’t draw closed the curtain.

Brown nights and days these are,
slow as peat water snarled
in roan pipe and stell, a calling
far across the valley toward a ship of light

tomorrow I will let soil fill the trails
in both my hands: for now, this window lit
with your small pulse is single thing enough
to bare against the dark.

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219d

Saltire Sessions: Michael Pedersen

The Saltire Society talks to author, poet, & Edinburgh Makar Michael Pedersen about his work, his inspirations, & the power of collaboration

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCTgutNfMB4

#Scottish #literature #poetry #writing #collaboration #Edinburgh

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164d

Be gentle
In a world
That is
Everything
But.

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158d

Who Were the Black Women of the Harlem Renaissance?

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Nu83pQl7mgQ

At PG:

Gwendolyn Bennett

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=Gwendolyn+Bennett

Alice Dunbar Nelson

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=Alice+Dunbar+Nelson

Anne Spencer

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=Anne+Spencer

Zora Neale Hurston

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=Zora+Neale+Hurston

#books #literature #poetry

Anne B. Spencer in her wedding dress - picryl.com

She is standing with her right hand on the back of a chair.

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224d

An raoir, mar a gheall an sanas,
bha na fèidh air an rathad,
sùilean lainnireach an solus a chàr…

—Uilleam Nèill, “Feidh”
Published in Making tracks: and other poems (Gordon Wright, 1988)

#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #poem #poetry #deer #20thcentury

Feidh
Uilleam Nèill

An raoir, mar a gheall an sanas,
bha na fèidh air an rathad,
sùilean lainnireach an solus a chàr.
Cha b’iad na fèidh ruadha nam beann àrda
ach an fheadhainn beag a th’ againn sa choilltean Ghallobha.
Thanaig sreath bàrdachd Dhonnchaidh ’nam inntinn:
“Chunnaic mi ’n damh donn sna h-eildean . . .”

Cha tigeadh dhomhsa ach facail bheaga ’na choimeas
mu na feidh bheaga seo:
“Ma ’s beag iad, tha iad grinn is neo-challaichte,
agus, gus an tig an saoghal gu crioch,
dileas d’an ghnè-san.”

Deer
William Neill

Last night, as the sign promised,
the deer were on the road,
shining eyes in the car’s light.
These were not the red deer of the high mountains,
but the little ones we have in the woods of Galloway.
A line of Duncan’s poetry came into my mind:
“I saw the brown stag and his hinds . . .”

Nothing would come to me but little words compared with his,
about these little deer:
“If they are small, they are graceful and untamed
and, till their world comes to an end,
faithful to their kind.”

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219d

TFW you remember Interloan & find out you can borrow a book for 20-40% the price of buying it. Yay libraries!
I'm planning to read !<16 nonfiction books this year, but none will have a cooler title than

City of Sin and Splendour- Writings on Lahore

Looking forward to learning more about my grandfather's birthplace

#Reading #History #Poetry #Urdu #bookstodon
@bookstodon

Cover of City of Sin and Splendour- Writings on Lahore, edited by Bhapsi Sidhwa

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217d

Four crabs from the cold firth
alive for a shilling. The largest
reared in the pot, in spite of
the fierce water, but soon
we cracked his limbs with our teeth
and wheedled with spoons and fingers
for the last shreds of flesh
from the crannies of his briny body…

—Angus Calder, “Crab”
from WAKING IN WAIKATO (diehard, 1997)

Angus Calder (1942–2008) – journalist, historian, editor, critic, & poet – was born #OTD, 5 Feb

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/crab/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury

Crab
by Angus Calder

Four crabs from the cold firth
alive for a shilling. The largest
reared in the pot, in spite of
the fierce water, but soon
we cracked his limbs with our teeth
and wheedled with spoons and fingers
for the last shreds of flesh
from the crannies of his briny body.

In that brittle maze
I found no features to remind me
of our brains, our livers
or our smooth bellies, yet doubtless
their functions were held by some part
of the paste of his cavities.

Spread, soup and risotto –
only the gills were rejected.

In the days we ate him
I did not forget
his moment on the floor
to amuse the baby, when she
gloated at the slow clash
of his last menace,
nor that shape which made me think
of a soft soldier
fried in the cockpit of a tank.

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115d

Pale yellow letters
humbly straggling across
the once brilliant red
of a broken shop-face
CONFECTIO…

—Edwin Morgan, “To Joan Eardley”
Joan Eardley (1921–1963) was born #OTD, 18 May

🖼️ Joan Eardley, “Sweet Shop, Rotten Row, 1960–1961”, Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, University of Glasgow

https://www.gla.ac.uk/collections/#/details?irn=59156&catType=C

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #art #visualart #painting #20thcentury #JoanEardley

"To Joan Eardley"
by Edwin Morgan

Pale yellow letters
humbly straggling across
the once brilliant red
of a broken shop-face
CONFECTIO
and a blur of children
at their games, passing,
gazing as they pass
at the blur of sweets
in the dingy, cosy
Rottenrow window –
an Eardley on my wall.
Such rags and streaks
that master us! –
that fix what the pick
and bulldozer have crumbled
to a dingier dust,
the living blur
fiercely guarding
energy that has vanished,
cries filling still
the unechoing close!
I wandered by the rubble
and the houses left standing
kept a chill, dying life
in their islands of stone.
No window opened
as the coal cart rolled
and the coalman’s call
fell coldly to the ground.
But the shrill children
jump on my wall.

“Sweet Shop, Rotten Row”. A painting by Joan Eardley. Oil paint is applied thickly, in blotches of colour. A mustard-yellow sign bearing the letters CONFECTIO sits above a blurred shop front, showing a green window on the left and a red door on the right. Three almost abstract figures of children – two girls and a boy, probably – are dashing past the shop from left to right in a swirl of pinks, browns, and blues. The leftmost child has long black hair streaming out behind her head, adding to the sense of swift movement.

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217d

Build me a bridge over the stream
to my neighbour’s house
where he is standing in dungarees
in the fresh morning…

—Iain Crichton Smith, “Neighbour”
published in NEW COLLECTED POEMS (Carcanet, 2011)

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781857549607/new-collected-poems/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #IainCrichtonSmith

Iain Crichton Smith
Neighbour

Build me a bridge over the stream
to my neighbour’s house
where he is standing in dungarees
in the fresh morning.

O ring of snowdrops
spread wherever you want
and you also blackbird
sing across the fences.

My neighbour, if the rain falls on you,
let it fall on me also
from the same black cloud
that does not recognise gates.

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218d

He saw the weather written on the pane
as he buckled on his gaiters,
shouldering the hammer to walk the lane
spooked with his breath, to the pond
at the extremity of his acres…

—Lorn Macintyre, “Bonspiel”
published in Snowball in Summer (Argyll, 2009)

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/bonspiel/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #curling #WinterOlympics #WinterSports #winter #bonspiel

Bonspiel
Lorn Macintyre

He saw the weather written on the pane
as he buckled on his gaiters,
shouldering the hammer to walk the lane
spooked with his breath, to the pond
at the extremity of his acres.
The hammer bounced on the ice
a dozen times before he was certain
that it would bear the weight.
He took the pungent moth-balls
from the pockets of his plus-fours
before sending the serving-man
with a message round the doors:
‘Bonspiel at Murdo’s pond, tomorrow, noon.’

They came on foot, on horseback, by trap,
ladies in breeches, ploughmen with twine
lashing their shins for the only game
in the district. The shelves in the brick shed
were lined with stones like ancient cheeses,
each one owned by a chalked name.
Men down on a knee, as if proposing,
send the stone slithering across the ice,
its way hastened by scrabbling brooms.
Stones clash, and by the pond’s edge
a brazier offers searing chestnuts.

The pond has leached into the earth now,
reverting to a bog. In the bracken
I uncover the brazier’s rusted remains,
like a cauldron from an abandoned coven.
The door of the shed hangs off its hinges.
I lift down a stone from the dusty shelves,
the granite cracked from the collision
in the forgotten bonspiel. As I send it
spinning across the floor I hear
the roar, and through the broken window
see a beauty brushing up her game.

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130d

‘Everything Everyday’ – Poetry as Journalistic and Political Device with Hannah Lavery

RJ Hunter chats with former Edinburgh Makar, published poet and theatre-maker, Hannah Lavery, about her new collection Everything Everyday: A Year of Empty Promises and how poetry can lend itself to use as a journaling device.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JU2xdfLKDs

#Scottish #literature #poetry

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85d

Today they laid him in the earth's cold colour,
a man from Lewis with his seventy-five
years struck from his head. Teacher, scholar,
he had worked a true task when all alive…

—Iain Crichton Smith, “For Angus MacLeod”
Published in New Collected Poems (Carcanet, 2011)

Iain Crichton Smith, himself a teacher, commemorates the life of a former Headmaster of Oban High School

Today, 17 June, is Thank a Teacher Day

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #teaching #teachers #ThankATeacherDay

Iain Crichton Smith

For Angus MacLeod
Headmaster, and Editor of Gaelic Poems

Today they laid him in the earth's cold colour,
a man from Lewis with his seventy-five
years struck from his head. Teacher, scholar,
he had worked a true task when all alive,

building a school, elucidating texts.
The Gaelic shone quite clearly in his bones.
A casket filled with ashes had been mixed
with filtered sunlight and the small stones.

A useful life with pupils and with poems:
sufficient honours (his humour asked no more)
he takes his place in many minds and rooms.
Without their knowing it, his patient care

instructs far hands to turn a new lever,
a voice to speak in a mild-mannered tone.
The deeds we do reverberate forever.
Inveterate justice weighs the flesh and bone.

His best editions are some men and women
who scrutinise each action like a word.
The truest work is learning to be human
definitive texts the poorest can afford.

Edited 85d ago

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144d

'What I Mean When I Say I'm Tired'
~ K.E. Sermonté

"I want quiet.
I want the mercy of being unseen
without being unloved."

"What I Mean When I Say I'm Tired"

I don't mean I want to sleep.

I mean I want to disappear for a while.

To be rain on a stranger's roof.

To be smoke rising from someone else's fire.

I don't want to die.

But I do want to rest in a way

the world has never allowed me.

I don't want comfort.

I want quiet.

I want the mercy of being unseen

without being unloved.

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143d

The Wee Sparrow Poetry Podcast: Niall Campbell

In this episode, Claire Thom chats to Niall Campbell about his collection The Island in the Sound, which was shortlisted for the 2025 Forward Prize for Best Collection & the Saltire Society Poetry Book of the Year, & longlisted for the 2024 Highland Book Prize.

https://theweesparrowpoetrypress.substack.com/p/episode-72-niall-campbell

#Scottish #literature #poetry #podcast

Edited 143d ago

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115d

This chaumert cairn kists bitties
O oor bricht an battert past—
A things that Scots hae keepit or drappit or lost
Or couldna tak wi them when they deed
Or went awa for guid…

—Jim Alison, “Ingaunees”
originally published as a poster for The National Museum of Scotland

Today, 18 May, is International Museum Day

https://icom.museum/en/international-museum-day-2/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #museum #LewisChessmen #archaeology #InternationalMuseumDay

Ingaunees
by Jim Alison

This chaumert cairn kists bitties
O oor bricht an battert past—
A things that Scots hae keepit or drappit or lost
Or couldna tak wi them when they deed
Or went awa for guid.

Dootless there’s ither grand ingaunees ootby
In Russia, India an sic fremmit fields
Whaur gangrel skelfs an shards o Scotland skinkle
Or gether stoor on shelves.

A feel fur thon wee Lewis keelies stuck in Lunnon
Goggle-e’ed wi chowin the taps aff their shields,
Haimseek fur Norroway ower the faem.

One of the Lewis Chessmen. Carved from walrus ivory, probably in the 12th century. This chesspiece depicts an armoured warrior – quilted armour or perhaps chain-mail is suggested by diagonal cross-hatched lines inscribed into the long coat, which also forms a hood over the character's head. He holds a full-length kite-shaped shield in front of him, bearing an X-shaped cross made of four interwoven lines. Holding a sword in his right hand, clutched close against his body, the warrior's outsized face stares over the top of the shield, his eyes wide. His top set of teeth are visible, chewing at his shield in berserker battle-frenzy.

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1y

Lost and Found: A Newly Discovered Poem by Robert Frost

Nothing New,” which the American poet wrote in 1918, is published for the first time in The New Yorker’s Anniversary Issue.

By Jay Parini

https://www.newyorker.com/books/double-take/lost-and-found-a-newly-discovered-poem-by-robert-frost

#books #literature #poetry

Frost in 1949

Walter Albertin, World Telegram staff photographer - Library of Congress. New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection.

http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3c20741

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Robert_Frost_NYWTS_4.jpg

Frost appears as an elderly man with white, slightly disheveled hair, deep-set eyes, and a contemplative expression.

His face shows signs of age, with visible wrinkles that add to his distinguished and wise appearance.

He is dressed in a suit and tie, reflecting his formal yet approachable persona.

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1y

"Give me a little less
with every dawn."

Marjorie Lotfi performs John Burnside's "Prayer" in a film directed by Savannah Acquah, from a new series from the ‪Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation & the Writers’ Mosaic

https://www.brinkerhoffpoetry.org/poems/prayer

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #JohnBurnside

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216d

to hear the Gaelic ann an taigh-mòr
air a’ chrìch eadar dà shiorrachd
ann an Èirinn far am faighear taic
o gach comhairle gus na dìogan a ghlanadh,
na claisean a chàradh…

—Pàdraig MacAoidh, “Geographical Exclusions Apply”
published in With Their Best Clothes On: New Writing Scotland 36 (ASL, 2018)

#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #poem #poetry

Pàdraig MacAoidh
GEOGRAPHICAL EXCLUSIONS APPLY

to hear the Gaelic ann an taigh-mòr
air a’ chrìch eadar dà shiorrachd
ann an Èirinn far am faighear taic
o gach comhairle gus na dìogan a ghlanadh,
na claisean a chàradh, ged nach robh e
idir gu leòr agus fios gun teagamh sam bith
gun robh an taigh a’ grodadh, nach bi
e fada son t-saoghail seo, leis gun robh e –
mar gach taigh-mòr eile – a’ tuiteam
às a chèile on mhullach, gun robh
na sglèatan a’ crochadh air adhar,
na cabair phreasach nas làine de thuill
na de dh’fhiodh ’s it was lovely to hear
the Gaelic aig solas dearg ann an Gleann
Iucha far an do stad car agus shlaighd
fear sios an uinneag agus leig e às –
gu slaodach – cnap cotain a bha stobte
sa bheul ann am beàrn far am b’ àbhaist
fiacail a bhith, an cotan air tionndadh
dearg gorm dubh agus air maistrich
le na duilleagan ’s an traillich ’s an uisge
ronnach ruadh a’ ruith sìos a’ chlais
sìos dhan it was lovely to hear the Gaelic
anns a’ chlò a’ chlò a’ chlò às am bi
fàileadh m’ eilein-sa ag èirigh gach trup
a bhios tu fàs teth agus fliuch aig an aon àm
mar gum b’ e comharra feise a bh’ ann
rud cho borb bèisteil ’s nach urrainn dhut
a chumail ri taobh do chraicinn, nad
achlaisean, eadar do shlèistean, gun iad a bhith
air an suathadh, air an sgròbadh a bhith dearg
’s dubh ’s geal ’s tu ag ràdh eadar fiaclan dùinte

an ceann a chèile Moire Moire Moire it was
lovely to hear the Gaelic aig àm dol fodha
na grèine, gus am bris an là, gu latha-luain,
aig mullach na creige ann an Gippsland
far an do shad an Sgitheanach
Alasdair Mac a’ Mhaolain tùsanaich
far an oir an dèidh peilearan
a chur nan casan mar gum b’ e plàigh
a bh’ annta ’s beathaichean leòinte
nach robh fiù ’s airidh air tròcair,
nach b’ annta ach troc it was lovely
to hear the Gaelic air an t-seann sgeir,
na glasan-làimhe a’ bìdeadh d’ abhbrannan
’s do chaoil-dhùirn agus an t-sàl
a’ suathadh d’ fheòla agus an reothart
a’ lìonadh gun dòchas agad – agus i
an àm a’ phreasaidh a-rithist an-còmhnaidh
mar a bha ’s mar a bhitheas – ach guth fireann
thar nan tonn a’ dùrdail it was lovely

Peter Mackay
GEOGRAPHICAL EXCLUSIONS APPLY

to hear the Gaelic in a big house
on the border between two counties
in Ireland where you could get help
from both councils for cleaning the gutters
repairing the rones, even though it was
never enough and there was no doubt
that the house was rotting, not long
for this world, since it was – like every other
big house – tearing itself apart
from the top down, and the slates
were hanging in air and the corrugating
roofbeams more full of holes than wood
and it was lovely to hear the Gaelic at a red
light in Glencoe where a car stopped and a man
wound down his window and dropped –
gently – a sop of cotton that had been
stoppering a hole in his mouth where once
there’d been a tooth, the cotton now turning
red blue black and swirling chewing
masticating with the leaves and butts
in the red rusted water running down the gutter
towards it was lovely to hear the Gaelic
in the tweed the tweed the tweed from which
the smell of my island rises each time
you get both hot and wet at the same time
as if it was a marker of sex, something so
barbaric and animal you could not keep it
beside your skin, in your armpits, between
your thighs without them being rubbed
and scratched red and black and white
while you say between teeth gritted together
Mary Mary Mary it was lovely to hear

the Gaelic at the setting of the sea, when the day
breaks, till the day of the moon, at the top
of the cliff in Gippsland where the Sgitheanach
Alasdair Mac a’ Mhaolain threw aborigines
over the edge, having shot them in the legs
as if they were a plague, or wounded
animals, that weren’t worthy of pity
that were nothing but brutes it was lovely
to hear the Gaelic on the ol’ tidal rock
the manacles biting into your ankles
and wrists and the brine of the rising
spring tide seasoning your flesh and
no hope left but – it being the time
of the press-gangs again, as usual,
as it was and shall be – a male voice
murmuring over the seas it was lovely

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214d

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift…

—Carol Ann Duffy, “Prayer”
from MEAN TIME (Picador, 2017; Anvil, 1993)

https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/carol-ann-duffy/mean-time/9781509852949

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #CarolAnnDuffy #womenwriters #prayer

Prayer
Carol Ann Duffy

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child’s name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio’s prayer –
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

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215d

I'm guest reader at Poetry Live in #Auckland on Tuesday 10 February! Here are the key details:

What: Poetry Live, Auckland
Where: Cafe 39, 39 Ponsonby Road
When: Tuesday 10 February, 7.30-10pm
With: Open mike + guest musician Cold Champagne

Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1822227305127271 #poetry #nzpoetry #nzlit

Poster for Poetry Live Auckland on 10 February, showing pictures of guest poet Tim Jones and guest musician Cold Champagne against a red background, with yellow text giving details of the event also contained in the text of the post.

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214d

Mary, Queen of Scots was beheaded #OnThisDay, 8 February, 1587, on the orders of Elizabeth I of England – her first cousin once removed.

Consider the way she had to go,
Think of the hungry snare,
The net she herself had woven,
Aware or unaware…

—Marion Angus, “Alas! Poor Queen”
Published in TURN OF THE DAY (1931) – online via the National Library of Scotland

https://digital.nls.uk/works-by-selected-scottish-authors/archive/129159433?mode=fullsize

#Scottish #literature #history #poem #poetry #MaryQueenofScots #womenwriters #20thcentury

Alas! Poor Queen
Marion Angus

She was skilled in music and the dance
And the old arts of love
At the court of the poisoned rose
And the perfumed glove,
And gave her beautiful hand
To the pale Dauphin
A triple crown to win—
And she loved little dogs
And parrots
And red-legged partridges
And the golden fishes of the Due de Guise
And a pigeon with a blue ruff
She had from Monsieur d’Elboeuf.

Master John Knox was no friend to her ;
She spoke him soft and kind,
Her honeyed words were Satan’s lure
The unwary soul to bind.
“Good sir, doth a lissome shape
And a comely face
Offend your God His Grace
Whose Wisdom maketh these
Golden fishes of the Due de Guise?”

She rode through Liddesdale with a song ;
“Ye streams sae wondrous strang,
Oh, mak’ me a wrack as I come back
But spare me as I gang.”
While a hill-bird cried and cried
Like a spirit lost
By the grey storm-wind tost.

Consider the way she had to go,
Think of the hungry snare,
The net she herself had woven,
Aware or unaware,

Of the dancing feet grown still,
The blinded eyes.—
Queens should be cold and wise,
And she loved little things,
Parrots
And red-legged partridges
And the golden fishes of the Due de Guise
And the pigeon with the blue ruff
She had from Monsieur d’Elboeuf.

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215d

"Mastered by desire impulsive,
By a mighty inward urging,
I am ready now for singing,
Ready to begin the chanting
Of our nation’s ancient folk-song..."

An epic border: Finland’s poetic masterpiece, the Kalevala, has roots in 2 cultures and 2 countries

by Thomas A. DuBois

https://theconversation.com/an-epic-border-finlands-poetic-masterpiece-the-kalevala-has-roots-in-2-cultures-and-2-countries-261444

Kalevala at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=Kalevala

#books #literature #poetry

Mistress of the North, Louhi attacking Väinämöinen in the form of a giant eagle with her troops on her back. (The Defense of the Sampo, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, 1896), Turku Art Museum.

The scene depicts an episode from the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic, showing the sorceress Louhi (the Mistress of the North) transformed into a giant eagle attacking the hero Väinämöinen and his companions as they flee in a boat with the magical Sampo. Louhi carries her warriors on her back as she swoops down, her enormous wings spread across the green-gold sky. The heroes in the boat below defend themselves with weapons, fighting desperately to protect the Sampo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalevala#/media/File:Sammon_puolustus.jpg

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215d

You might forget the exact sound of her voice
or how her face looked when sleeping.
You might forget the sound of her quiet weeping
curled into the shape of a half moon…

—Jackie Kay, “Darling”
published in DARLING (Bloodaxe, 2007)

https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/darling-877

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #JackieKay #grief #death

Darling
by Jackie Kay

You might forget the exact sound of her voice
or how her face looked when sleeping.
You might forget the sound of her quiet weeping
curled into the shape of a half moon,

when smaller than her self, she seemed already to be leaving
before she left, when the blossom was on the trees
and the sun was out, and all seemed good in the world.
I held her hand and sang a song from when I was a girl –

Heel y’ho boys, let her go boys –
and when I stopped singing she had slipped away,
already a slip of a girl again, skipping off,
her heart light, her face almost smiling.

And what I didn’t know or couldn’t say then
was that she hadn’t really gone.
The dead don’t go till you do, loved ones.
The dead are still here holding our hands.

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85d

I could blame da wye da sea is smoothed
da stanes; da sylk o touch; da waelin, laevin;
an will da haert be dere whin I come back?

—Christine De Luca, “Discontinuity”
published in DAT TRICKSTER SUN (Mariscat, 2012)

Hear Christine read this poem on The Poetry Archive:

https://poetryarchive.org/poem/discontinuity/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Shetland #Shaetlan #Scots #Scotslanguage

Discontinuity
Christine De Luca

I could blame da wye da sea is smoothed
da stanes; da sylk o touch; da waelin, laevin;
an will da haert be dere whin I come back?

Or I could blame da saandiloo. He wis clear
whit wye ta geng: dis wye noo, nae luikin
owre your shooder. Tide dusna wait;

see da wye da swill o joy is drained.
Dance daday. Damoarn you slip
inta eternity.

Or I could blame da hush at fills you
til you’re lik ta burst wi aa da wirds
at could be said but you hadd back.

Hit’s whit happens whan you step
in time, but sense a fault-line vimmerin
trowe you: dis side or dat?

Only da sea can greet an sing at da sam time:
shade an licht: cobalt, ultramarine an dan
da lönabrak – a tize, a frush o whicht.

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