The Post Mortem Reveals

There is a glen inside me A stag stands within my skull A curlew echoes in my inner ear Can you smell the wind of the Cairngorms on my breath? Can you smell the peat of Muick rise from my skin? The Indian ocean laps at the twigs of my veins My nails scratch at the horror of Auschwitz Like a crab moving over the surface of history Crammed into the coracle of my brain A tranquil Buddhist monk, a frenetic John Knox Navigate the alpha waves of my consciousness Poetry blinks like a lighthouse onto my retina Prose is the sea gull galumphing on the shore Gall stones are the legacy from schooling Scars are where I broke its glass ceiling In the nest of my heart My dead child opens his beak andcheeps in vain Am I happy? Once I stepped into an August sunbeam And vanished into cosmic unconsciousness My tangle of bones and sinews Lay like a basket of slithering eels Abandoned in the dust of ancestral mould I have grown old amongst my family ghosts, Cuddling my mother tongue, my spoken identity