(Life and Times of the North Esk Reservoir)
I am the airt fowk tramp in sairch o quate,
faur frae the toon’s ding-dang in the lang, late
simmer oors, or in a blink o winter licht –
nae soond but the tirlin sang o whaup
on the wund’s souch.
Tho seein me noo ye’d nivver ken
I wisnae aye sae lown – I hae owerseen
time’s dirdum: I cairry merks o the warld’s slaw birth
beddit in ma craigs and bields – the prent o Silurian fins
that flichtert aince mang muckle swaws –
they braw faulds o saut watter whan I wis an ocean,
braid and deep.
Syne, at lest, the faem seeped awa tae kythe
ma green braes, risin frae a lochan smaa
whaur sea hud raired, and aawhaur,
insteid o fish, the yird’s starns shawed –
gress o Parnassus, gowans, and May spink;
till, ae day, athoot warnin, the blatter o hooves,
dunder o cairts, clatter o buits: hunners o men
howk, heeze and lig stanes, biggin ma watter intae a dam
tae pouer the Empire’s mills; whae’d hae thocht! –
yowdendrifts o paper blawin oot tae the warld
fur prent – Scott’s Waverley tales – and pent –
the bleezin mists o Turner’s veesions,
and aa the sangs o Burns;
lang syne the mills hae fauldit, mercats scauldit
in feckless fechts tae hae their gear bocht and sauld;
aince mair, ootthrou the year, I am the airt whaur quate
rings in the late simmer oors, or in a blink o winter licht;
nae soond the day, save a reeshle o braith on the loch’s face
and a lanely whaup’s tirlin sang on the wund’s souch.
Notes on this poem
440 million years ago, the North Esk Reservoir was part of an ocean environment. Since the 19th century, for over a hundred years, the nearby town of Penicuik was one of the British Empire’s largest paper producers. The water that powered its mills was regulated by the reservoir, high in the Pentland Hills, not far from where I live. Born into a family of musicians, I was raised in the rural Scottish Borders by parents from industrial Lancashire. I’m married to a Gael from Skye. English, Scots and Gaelic are all part of my identity. Depending on the voice that suggests itself, I write in English or Scots. I’m also a singer-songwriter, and sound is an intrinsic part of poetry’s meaning for me. When writing, I always speak my words aloud, listening to the vowels’ music, and to consonantal percussion: ‘that flichtert aince mang muckle swaws’ (that flitted once among big waves); ‘a lanely whaup’s tirlin sang on the wund’s souch’ (a lonely curlew’s vibrating song on the wind’s sigh). The Scots word airt, meaning place, is closely related to the Gaelic of the same meaning – aite. Scots is a richly expressive and varied language, with no standard form. I admire the sublime poetry in Sir David Lyndsay’s 16th century revolutionary play Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis (with its distinctive linguistic French associations), the matchless Border ballads, the poetry of Elizabeth Melville, Fergusson, Burns, William Soutar, MacDiarmid, Violet Jacob, and of the many brilliant poets writing in Scots today.
