Poem: A Scottish Trilogy
I. To lost summers
The sun's cradle is gone
gone, the threadbare way of all past summers,
my own soul's beggar
shuffling for golden rays of sunshine,
hoarding by-gone treasures of warmth
in the patched overcoat of my heart,
close to the bone,
in the marrow
muttering furtively
I tip-toe
in the autumnal dread
daily documenting the death of leaves
all thoughts of restful repose
banished by the wind
coiling its scornful lash
across the weltered visages
of fluttering trees
recoiling
against the dreadful sacrilege of their
plundered limbs;
It is the time of barrenness come-
and we are as naked as the rest
stripped of our summer foliage,
under our garments all bundled,
the whiteness of ivory is embellished.
II. To lost lives
Three women
have their heads together
one black
one brown
and one in between;
Huddled in this feverish clinch they contrive
some nameless conspiracy
and though
there is enough gale to blow
them away, spinning
their arms and legs like windmills
over the hills,
they still stand there
unafraid
but quite dishevelled,
pulling at their long sleeves and twitching
their collars,
as I pass by unseen,
yet another leaf perhaps,
like dozens heaped all along the avenue
quite dead, and spotted with bloodstains,
congealed into strange shapes and forms
upon their lurid flanks.
Somehow vulgar, these public executions,
I think-
women are more sophisticated
in whispering their murderous secrets.
III. To lost generations
Selfishness is the creed of millions.
Selfless devotion
had its moments
and is alien harvest to fallow fields,
vacant in their expression,
wallowing in the waters of stagnant unease;
The revolutions of time
have eroded your subtle dreams
eyes that should have been,
eyes that should have dreamed,
subtle eyes with shining dreams!
They are done
They are done for,
the wretched compartments
of a rusty railcar
careering precariously on the rail tracks
of unattainable hopes;
'We were all given our talismans'.
And the relics?
The ancient gifts?
What of them?
The sacred treasures are smouldering,
burnt in effigy,
gilded calves
burning in tangible flame,
glittering with the bloodlust of vanity;
Tendrils of smoke
now commemorate
what once we possessed,
comely faces
that no longer recognise each other,
passing strangers in the street,
frozen into silent pools
of inward-anger
roasting slowly
on the spits of eternity,
drab little ditties
of description,
footnotes to the main theme
of Immortality-
Often, when plagued
by this consciousness
of all that is lost
Entire generations
have torn themselves into rags
of raging fury.
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