snowdrops

in freda's garden, finally, spring is on the way....

Where Do Rivers Begin?

Where Do Rivers Begin?

Where do rivers begin?
I’ve never been remotely interested in
wide-mouthed estuaries where fresh meets salt,
where rivers must halt,
knowing that soon enough, on some fated day,
I’ll be sailing that way, skailing
into the ocean of eternity.

For now, I want to foot it back
along the dreary rooted banks,
those tangled briary paths near towns,
bollarded road ends, industrial estates
blocked by burned out cars,
coal - stained strands and sewage pipes,
short-lived silver sands of pleasure beach,
plumbing the mud flats like an arthritic heron
until I see the river bridged and narrowed.

Then further back and in
below stone arches spanned by Telfer and Wade
to the black and foaming tumbling
where the tourists hang over to gawp
at the ranting and rumbling falls,
then further back yet . . .
a swift bend up a glen, up a burn,
be it in Leadhills or Himalayas,
where a startled sheep bolts in alarm
past the ruins of a farm heaped in a broken ruckle . . .

. . . finally to be able
to straddle its clear cable and trickle.
Then up, steeper still
to where cloud smoors hill
on a summit of bubbling capillaries.
It’s there in the boggy mess and black loam
that Nature condenses her tear on a stone
for a birth and a death.

I might stop the ocean here.

Argument

Argument

“Do not become too fond
of life, a favourite green
and long-stemmed glass for wine,
and finely etched, a friend.
Find in Refusal an end –
for all shall equally
be taken.”

Or find peace in attachment so
intense: to wine, to lover, friend, locale,
Life sparks in common miracle.
Swear by red-ochre, soot-black, yellow
work-words, dye-words, bee-words,
clay-words, fish fin dicing, slicing sea-
words, bird-wing winding, binding sky-
words, tree-root gripping, tripping Earth
so hard, that when, just once, they fly,
their happiness is magical; a birth
and buzz. They hum. They sing. They die.


Walter Perrie

from his new book: Lyrics & Tales in Twa Tongues
published by Fras

long poem magazine launch announcement

Launch of the Long Poem Magazine, issue 5: The event will take place at the CCA, Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow at 7pm on Tuesday 22nd March. Hosted by the Scottish Writers' Centre, the reading is in honour of Edwin Morgan, the man and his work. It will feature: the Scottish actor Tam Dean Burn performing about 25 minutes of EM's poem version of Gilgamesh. Adnan al-Sayegh, an international award-winning Iraqi exile will read 'Pages from the Biography of an Exile' in Arabic, with his translator Stephen Watts reading the English language versions. James McGonigal, Sandy and Stephen will read their long poems.