The Pigeon Men
Three men are leaning on the corrugated
iron,
Staring out across the fields at the
china blue
Stretch of sky beyond. They are waiting
for something.
‘Ye couldn’t buy that view,’
Kit shakes his head. His son John reaches up on tiptoe,
A little apart, on the loft roof,
watching. Their backs
Are turned to the hand-stitched
patchwork of crees, sheds, fences,
The secret shacks
And small doors cobbled from sleepers and iron sheeting
Hauled up from underground. It was
pit-work
That made them ache to be out here in
the sunshine
Among the birds.
‘See yon green fields? Yonder’s where Horden pit was ‘
The biggest pit in Europe, that. Nowt
there now. Gone.’
John bites his tab, says nothing:
glares into the distance.
Then he throws up his white dove like a
flag: ‘Come on!’
And suddenly the sky is full of pigeons.
Over Blackhills Dene and Paradise they
fly
Places that are names on the map now
only:
Warren House, Whiteside,
And Clifton, Coxon, Cuba Streets, the vanished
Homes of vanished men who never dreamed
How much of themselves they nailed in
the crees and gardens.
Home the birds stream,
While John, on the stock-loft roof, waves the frantic fantail.
‘Come on!’ he yells to the open
sky; ‘Howway!’
And the white wings beat at the end of
his outstretched fingers,
As if he too was ready to fly away.
Borderers
Are ye one of us?
Are ye for us or agin us?
Are ye one of us?
Are ye for us or agin us?
Are ye one of us?
Are ye for us or agin us?
Are ye for us or agin us?
Are ye one of us?
Are ye Armstrong, are ye Johnstone,
Are ye Hall or Reed or Heron,
Are ye Henderson or Graham,
Are ye Beattie, Bell or Potts,
Are ye Musgrave, are ye Dixon,
Are ye Widderington or Nixon,
Are ye Charlton, are ye Robson,
Are ye wi us, or ye not?
Are ye Elliott or Maxwell,
Are ye Milburn, Tait or Turnbull,
Are ye Rutherford or Pringle,
Are ye friend or are ye foe?
Are ye Kerr or Hume or Little,
Are ye Laidler or Liddle,
Are ye Storey, are ye Ridley,
Are ye one of us or no?
Are ye Dodd or are ye Trotter,
Are ye Selby, Gray or Forster,
Are ye Davison or Pringle,
Are ye Collingwood or Scott,
Are ye Douglas, are ye Dixon,
Are ye Heatherington or Nixon,
Are ye Charlton, are ye Robson,
Are ye wi us, or ye not?
Wool on the whin’s barb marks the track.
The violence of molten rock
Stretches before you like the sea.
From Eildon’s summit you look out
On frozen time. For miles, the black
Impenetrable, speechless hills
Of Liddesdale and Teviotdale,
Redesdale, Coquetdale, North Tyne
Rucked and buckled, patched with pine,
Cold, embattled, acid-green
Moorland, blackland, carved between
Floes of ice and tides of men,
Fastnesses of bracken, slopes
And
gullies fold their secrets close,
While the searchlight of the sun
Sweeps across them, one by one.
Three things have no end:
Fear, hunger and the wind.
They blast the open heathland where
A single strand of wire runs.
Such a fine thread holds the peace.
Bold,Tear like promises, it keeps
Its stony word upon the hill,
Unmoved, untouched, unblinking eye
Outstares the armies of the sky,
Time its only enemy.
Yarrow Water, Ettrick, Tweed:
A ruckle of stones and a nettle-bed,
Grey-boned hawthorn, flecked with blood,
Almost
turned itself to stone,
Lichened trunk and strangled root -
Braid their shadows by the burn
In the places they belong.
Stone and tree-root, make us strong
Where the wind blows on the fell,
Where the track runs up the hill.
Who cares where you came from now?
Every ditch and fold and knowe
And the white grass that swallows down
Arrow-head and carved stone,
Becomes a place to watch and hide.
The wide land bristles, sharp with
eyes.
* * *
Where Tweed and Teviot’s waters meet,
They carry all away: the gates,
The fences, signposts. Pine trees sway
Like ships at mooring on their slopes.
Tree-root, picket, branch, black loam -
The flood unfastens all; its broom
Sweeps the living and the dead
Towards a place that has no borders.
South and north, the colours drain
From drowned fields as night falls
On far, unfathomable hills
That sink their differences in sleep;
One ocean, darkening. Who knows
Where the fence runs on the fell?
The fading light, equivocal
As quicksilver, the cloud, the rain
The
water singing in its veins,
Leave the earth to dark and wind.
Foula, Auld Yule
6th
January
Shut the door and pass the bottle
Round the circle of light.
One by one let us drink to the days
The sun makes ripe,
And join in your riddle, Aggie Jean, in the ring
Of the stove’s peat reek,
While, long past midnight, the child in
my lap is falling
Into sleep;
Into widening circles of sleep, that will carry her
Who knows where.
Let us drink to the fire within. We
know too well
The dark out there.
