Win-Blawn (Poems In England)

The Flâneuse I walk my city, soles-to-the-pavement Eyes-on-the- street-engagement Torn between wandering and settling. Alighting momentarily on a bench I am the town's observer Outwith the spider's web of interaction I watch the tug of the threads As others are drawn into communication I am all eyes, like a gigantic fly I flee when others try to come too close I am a matchstick person Strike me, strike me, I burst into flame I am the solitary walker Flâneuse is my name Wedge of Chastity Like a tooth set in a gum Snug nestling in the pink Womb matters A bloody inconvenience Roll the stone over The dark mouth of the cave Try a Wedge of Chastity Winnie on a Swing Her feet touch the chimney Where a crow is roosting Her pigtail on the backswing Brushes the grass, Flicks away an aphid Tick tock, an hour of play till sleep Winnie laughs softly. The swing slices the air. Hop on Hop Hop on hop off, by the Scott monument Bagpipe music skirls. The air is rent Tacitus was here and warlike Celts With skulls on poles, tricked out in grim wolf pelts Five star hotels, dispensing haute couture The Grassmarket, once home of herd and whore The inn once owned by Biddy Milligan Greyfriar's kirk where Greyfriar's Bobby ran His snout now rubbed as bright's a Brasso can George Heriot School, the towering Edinburgh Castle Where tourists throng and chatter, pant and bustle Up its steep sides. See Chambers Street today Where art students once sketched Sean Connery The World's End- John Knox House- place of stories Samson's Ribs- the Pleasance- tourist foreys Down to the Parliament, affairs of state Facing the Palace for the high and great Dynamic Earth- Burns monument- such views! From Arthur's Seat, to gaze on and amuse The Iron Duke, the National Galleries King George IVth found much to thrill and please A sight for sore eyes in his mini kilt Twentyfive stone in weight, like a tank built Yellow canaries, hop on hop off crew Herd folk on board, to tell old tales anew Post Mortem June. The leaves hang limp with heat A woman sits painting her nails on her doorstep In homes across the city, hot in the clammy evening Families strip down to the very bare necessities I choose to think you were suddenly called away To a far country I am a moth, circling the light of your memory Sorrow's a quicksand, it sucks you down like a stone A year of rain, snow, sun has passed Since you lay down with the moon and did not rise Ice-Cream Ignore tsunamis. hurricanes, the ephemeral whims of the Seasons change comes with little, personal griefs and losses gouging your heart out like an ice cream scoop Change (3) Change is a whin-pod bursting Change is the scythe of sorrow Change is an axe descending Change is the death of tomorrow Change is schismatic winter Change is a wood of ash Change is a son coffined And the world, turned to trash Relics of my Parents' Marriage A heavy metal stew pot which survived a war The last of the dining room chairs Dark thick varnish. Legs like marathon runners These are all that outlived the clocks Those martinets of time His shotgun, his braces, the purplish peony roses The mousetraps primed to decapitate small rodents The rolling pin, her frocks, the gas mask The rusting tin of Vic. The porridge spurtle The keys that locked the cupboards of their kingdom Grandmother's Highland cattle painted in mist The wireless with the wonky on/off switch Diaspora of the grave goods, Who are your owners now? The Enigma of the Shells When I was small I was a living loom Tilting my hands like a cat's cradle While grandmother wound the wool Into a widening ball Tom Thumbs in the garden Rioted over the path A rumba of sunny flounces Wetting my tiny ankles Peony roses eased their velvet waistbands Cracks of shadows, like pleats between their petals Then there was the enigma of the shells Devoid of occupants, as if the horned snails Had glided into the air and disappeared So many mysteries of loom, of shadow, of shell Finding my thread in the greater pattern A Shirley Temple girl in somebody else's frock Childhood in the Cup of a Glen Memories blaze up like wildfire in my thoughts I grew with the Gaelic of places in my ears On summer nights, I heard the thunder speak Grumbling between the hills like a beast in a cage Back and fore, back and fore between the heather Bens The moon was a jiggly Chinese lantern bleared by rain Always, I heard the river, murmuring Like granny when she muttered in her sleep And it seemed like the walls were paper thin Could tear wide open, letting the thunder enter into the room The wind rose and fell in waves Like painted galloping horses in a carousal As a I child I spoke the language of the glen Its nights, its days, stepping from the ladder of the river Up to the loft of the Bens. My skin smelt of thyme and peat My footsteps cupped its pebbles. My tongue was a green fern The glen was a cunning woman, a healer A Cailleach of hopes and secrets It held the elixir or life, the alchemy of youth I would sit cross legged with a toad in the glen Staring into its jewelled eyes like a zealot adoring an idol When I swam in the loch I was a salmon's child Silver scaled in the sun. I knew I would always return In thought or flesh to the water. Deeside wombed me. My vertebrae are the pebbles of Glen Gairn, Glen Muick The little tinkling stream of Allt-an-Sneachda I came to womanhood here A rough wooing, bloody and harsh Smelling of fish and tin The braille of heather etched poems on my hands My mind was a quaich, its tangs fermented there This place will be my shroud My dead lie under this soil The moon kisses their stones Their souls, like pigeons, curmur On the kirk slates, looking down On their bolt-hole, their bone-lair Their precious scoop of ash Now I am toughened and leathered like a cured hide I draw near to the lip of the grave Deeside is the mouth that will swallow me My kist will rest easy, there The Naming of the Hens First, I name this hen Starboard In full sight of Ben Ledi and the River of Teith May all the books in Callander Bow down and rustle in reverence as she passes Second, I name this hen Runnymead May her yolk be as yellow's the thatch On Donald Trump's temporal lobes For she is feathered fore and aft And hulled like a Fin man's duvet And this is no false news Third, I name this hen, Hetty-Sequins-coquette She of the scaly shanks Patterned like the fish net stockings Of a red light Embro lady of the night Fourth, I name this hen Sheba- Kingschoice the Third Queen of the fowls of the pleasure- garden For she has an eye as shiny As the seat of a call-centre worker's bottom Fifth, I name this fine hen Port For her beak is a well-oiled piston Her belly, a barrel of goodness She pops out eggs Like balls fired off in a squash court Sixth, I name this hen Flibberty-Gibbet For her claws rake the ground beneath her Like a gold digger dragging her nails Down a sugar daddy's back Seventh, I name this hen Leda Kaminski For she cocks her leg like Pavlova In mid-arabesque Go forth unto the garden and lay Oh feathery flotilla of cackles and c-c-c clucks Away with you, into the hedge To unload your precious cargo, Whilst shielding your henny modestry Benefactresses of breakfasts Providers of omelette and quiche Burblers o bubbling fecundity Who could watch you strut and not dream Of beheaded egg, sun-tanned bread soldiers Ready to plunge into your savoury depths? The Neighbour His Saxon wife had skin like alabaster He was a scientist- a brilliant mind Liked Bach. Despised pop dirge and ghetto blaster He had a mistress, this was no disaster. She lived in Rome (he was the secret kind In Scotland, a good husband, honest master) Couples have cracks, stay wed by using plaster To fool the world around, in street or wynd A lie once told next time is spoken faster. It suited her to act as a pilaster She had her children, so she acted blind And for his soul, she'd say a pater noster My father talked of gardens with this mister, A cultural bridge, all difference left behind The thistle and the rose, bluebell and aster At Hogmanay, he gave him drink, a gesture Of goodwill, to this English gent, refined By learning, widely travelled, knowledge vaster Than ours, whose marriage was a small disaster. For Morven, in June Grief, I'm told, is yesterday's news Fit only for holding greasy chips Or wrapping flower stems dripping greenishwater Destined for the grave My prodigal, starved of love in life Your frame turned skeletal In the moments between work and thought A hurt opens up inside me, a kick in the gut Your voice is stilled, your human footprints gone A bulldozer had turned my world to rubble I have joined the ranks of the bereaved, the sorrowing Even when I lay me down to sleep, the wound weeps on Passport Control, Eternity Cloudy, nebulous setting In a room of no furniture, no walls Out of the dust of the dead Here come the happily wedded Here come the never bedded Here come the moaners and weepers The young, the sagacious, the crude The runners, the fops, the creepers Yesterday, like ivy, still stakes its claim on them Sweat, nails, hair, flesh, fat Detritus of mankind all left behind 360% of surplus requirement But the yearning remains to go back The sorting of souls must be Like herding cats. For minds Are slippery as eels The queue of ghosts is restless Waiting for their souls to fly the coop