M is for MacCaig and McNish

Road to Luskentyre

One of the poems that helped me discover a real love of poetry, coming yet again from 'The Rattle Bag', is by the very wonderful Norman MacCaig. It is very multi sensory, it has smells and sounds and textures, and captures the essential wildness of Scotland. It stopped me in my tracks the first time I read it. It is called 

Aunt Julia.

Aunt Julia spoke Gaelic 

very loud and very fast.

I could not answer her - 

I could not understand her.

She wore men's boots

when she wore any.

- I can see her strong foot 

stained with peat,

paddling the treadle of the spinning wheel 

while her right hand drew yarn

marvellously out of the air.

Hers was the only house

where I lay at night

in the absolute darkness

of a box bed, listening to

crickets being friendly.

She was buckets

and water flouncing into them.

She was winds pouring wetly 

round house-ends.

She was brown eggs, black skirts

and a keeper of threepennybits

in a teapot.

Aunt Julia spoke Gaelic

very loud and very fast.

By the time I had learned

a little, she lay

silenced in the absolute black 

of a sandy grave

in Luskentyre. 

But I hear her still, welcoming me

with a seagull's voice

across a hundred yards

of peatscrapes and lazybeds

and getting angry, getting angry

with so many questions

unanswered.

This wonderful video is by Hollie McNish, a young woman who I follow on Facebook and who writes and performs some very thoughtful and entertaining poetry. 

(Linking back to the A to Z Challenge)