A Book of Lives Read online

  EDWIN MORGAN

  A Book of Lives

  Contents

  Title Page

  Acknowledgements

  For the Opening of the Scottish Parliament, 9 October 2004

  Acknowledge the Unacknowledged Legislators!

  The Cost of Pearls

  Lines for Wallace

  The Battle of Bannockburn

  James IV To his Treasurer

  Retrieving & Renewing

  Planet Wave

  Valentine Weather

  Three Songs

  The Red Coat

  Knock at the Door

  The Good Years

  Old Gorbals

  1955 – A Recollection

  My First Octopus

  Boethius

  Charles V

  Oscar Wilde

  Hirohito

  New Times

  Gorgo and Beau

  Questions I

  Questions II

  The Welcome

  Brothers and Keepers

  The Old Man and E.A.P.

  An Old Woman’s Birthday

  For David Daiches, on his Ninetieth Birthday

  A Birthday: for I.H.F.

  Wild Cuts (with Hamish Whyte)

  Natural Philosophy

  A Bird Too Many

  Sure of a Big Surprise

  A Drip Too Many

  Soothe and Improve

  A Whizz Too Many

  Last Days

  A Movement Too Many

  Five Paintings

  Salvador Dali: Christ of St John of the Cross

  Sir Henry Raeburn: Portrait of Rev. Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch

  Rembrandt: Man in Armour

  Joan Eardley: Flood-Tide

  Avril Paton: Windows on the West

  Love and a Life

  The War on the War on Terror

  Conversation in Palestine

  Also by Edwin Morgan from Carcanet

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks are due to the editors of the following publications in which poems first appeared: Addicted to Brightness (Long Lunch Press), The Book of Questions, The Hand that Sees: poems for the quincentenary of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (RCOSOE and SPL), the Herald, the London Review of Books, Map, New Writing 13, Nova Scotia: New Scottish Speculative Fiction (Crescent), Painted, Spoken, PN Review, Proof, Scotland on Sunday, the Scotsman, The Wallace Muse (Luath).

  ‘For the Opening of the Scottish Parliament’ was commissioned by the Parliament and read at the opening ceremony on 9 October 2004. Scottish Parliamentary copyright, reprinted by permission.

  ‘Acknowledge the Unacknowledged Legislators!’ was written for the launch of the Cross-Party Group on Scottish Writing and Publishing 2005.

  The Battle of Bannockburn was published with Robert Baston’s Latin text in 2004 jointly by Akros Publications, Mariscat Press and the Scottish Poetry Library.

  ‘Retrieving & Renewing’ was commissioned by the Association for Scottish Literary Studies.

  ‘Valentine Weather’ was published online by the Scottish Poetry Library.

  ‘Three Songs’ was written for the band Idlewild.

  ‘My First Octopus’ was written to be broadcast by BBC radio on National Poetry Day 2004.

  Gorgo and Beau was commissioned by BBC Radio Scotland and broadcast on 29 December 2003.

  ‘The Welcome’ was written for the International Federation of Library Authorities (IFLA) Conference 2002.

  ‘Brothers and Keepers’ was written for a conference of social workers.

  Love and a Life was published by Mariscat Press in 2003.

  For the Opening of the Scottish Parliament, 9 October 2004

  Open the doors! Light of the day, shine in; light of the mind, shine out!

  We have a building which is more than a building.

  There is a commerce between inner and outer, between brightness and shadow, between the world and those who think about the world.

  Is it not a mystery? The parts cohere, they come together like petals of a flower, yet they also send their tongues outward to feel and taste the teeming earth.

  Did you want classic columns and predictable pediments? A growl of old Gothic grandeur? A blissfully boring box?

  Not here, no thanks! No icon, no IKEA, no iceberg, but curves and caverns, nooks and niches, huddles and heavens, syncopations and surprises. Leave symmetry to the cemetery.

  But bring together slate and stainless steel, black granite and grey granite, seasoned oak and sycamore, concrete blond and smooth as silk – the mix is almost alive – it breathes and beckons – imperial marble it is not!

  Come down the Mile, into the heart of the city, past the kirk of St Giles and the closes and wynds of the noted ghosts of history who drank their claret and fell down the steep tenement stairs into the arms of link-boys but who wrote and talked the starry Enlightenment of their days –

  And before them the auld makars who tickled a Scottish king’s ear with melody and ribaldry and frank advice –

  And when you are there, down there, in the midst of things, not set upon an hill with your nose in the air,

  This is where you know your parliament should be

  And this is where it is, just here.

  What do the people want of the place? They want it to be filled with thinking persons as open and adventurous as its architecture.

  A nest of fearties is what they do not want.

  A symposium of procrastinators is what they do not want.

  A phalanx of forelock-tuggers is what they do not want.

  And perhaps above all the droopy mantra of ‘it wizny me’ is what they do not want.

  Dear friends, dear lawgivers, dear parliamentarians, you are picking up a thread of pride and self-esteem that has been almost but not quite, oh no not quite, not ever broken or forgotten.

  When you convene you will be reconvening, with a sense of not wholly the power, not yet wholly the power, but a good sense of what was once in the honour of your grasp.

  All right. Forget, or don’t forget, the past. Trumpets and robes are fine, but in the present and the future you will need something more.

  What is it? We, the people, cannot tell you yet, but you will know about it when we do tell you.

  We give you our consent to govern, don’t pocket it and ride away.

  We give you our deepest dearest wish to govern well, don’t say we have no mandate to be so bold.

  We give you this great building, don’t let your work and hope be other than great when you enter and begin.

  So now begin. Open the doors and begin.

  Acknowledge the Unacknowledged Legislators!

  Go on, squawk at the font, you chubby Scotty.

  You have a long song ahead of you, do you know that?

  Of course not, but you let the ghost of a chuckle

  Emerge and flicker as if you had thrown

  Your very first chuckle and the water was playful.

  It will be, and gurly too, and full of dread

  Once you are grown and reckoning ahead.

  So squeal a little, kick a little, what’s a few drops

  On that truly enormous human brow.

  Man is chelovek, the Russians say,

  The one with a forehead, the one with forethought,

  The one whose mumbling and chuntering will not do,

  Who knows it will not do, who lolls or bounces

  Half-formed but strains for form, to be a child

  And not a bundle! The bungler, the mumbler

  Takes the deepest breath we are allowed,

  Whistles the horizon’s dawn right down

  Across the book of earth, audits the figures, />
  Tongue and teeth and lips in line, near-perfect,

  Ye see yon birkie ca’d a lord, the poet

  Has hooked one leg over his simple chair-arm,

  Sometimes tapping the beat upon his snuff-box,

  Sometimes singing an old and well-loved air

  To startlingly original effect.

  He’ll print it too! Won’t it be in a book?

  An open mind is proper in this case.

  It’s only poetry, after all. Someone –

  I can’t remember thousands of scribbling names –

  Has said ‘Poetry makes nothing happen.’

  I find that slightly fundamentalist.

  Yes, but do I go along with it?

  I do not go along with it. No, I don’t.

  Do I protest too much? Probably!

  Think of what I said about the child.

  He is a man now, let us talk to him.

  Ask him how far he thinks his birkie

  Registers on a Richter scale of insult.

  He’s dead? Well, get a good dictionary.

  Talk’s the thing. Dialogue’s the thing.

  If any parliamentarian should be so remiss

  As to think writers are interchangeable,

  Or stupid, or irrelevant, or poor doomy creatures,

  Punishments may have to be devised,

  I say may, we want to persuade, not scold.

  What is it but language that clamps

  A country to glory? Ikons, concertos,

  Pietàs, gamelans, gondolas, didgeridoos,

  Luboks, a brace of well-tuned sleigh-bells –

  These are very fine, of course they are.

  But better still, always far better still

  Is the sparkling articulacy of the word,

  The scrubbed round table where poet and legislator

  Are plugged in to the future of the race,

  Guardians of whatever is the case.

  The Cost of Pearls

  Do you want to challenge that dervish Scotland?

  Even and only being interrogated

  by a swash of centenarian mussels

  black-encrusted and crusty with it?

  When they folded their arms and gave such a click

  it could be heard right down Strathspey,

  did you reckon the risk of a dialogue was minimal?

  ‘Come on then, have at you!’ It was like an old play

  though far from funny. ‘All that winking stuff,

  that metal, those blades,

  you think we don’t know death when we smell it?’

  ‘Your nose deceives you. We are observers, explorers.

  We heard there was a murmuring of mussels,

  a clatter and a chatter

  somewhere in the gravel-beds of unbonny Scotland,

  almost like voices threatening something – ’

  ‘Damn sure we were threatening something! Do you know

  a thousand of us were killed in one day

  not long ago – ’ ‘I heard it was eight hundred – ’

  ‘Eight hundred, ten hundred, it was a massacre.

  Your pearl poachers breenged through our domains like demons

  with their great gully knives and scythed us to shreds

  for what might be, most likely might not be,

  a pearl, a pearl of price, a jeweller’s price.

  I hear a shuffling of papers. Prepare yourself.

  We are our wisest, neither clique nor claque

  but full conclave. We want to know,

  and we will know, what is it gives you

  your mania for killing. Don’t interrupt!

  For a few smouldering prettinesses

  at neck and brow you would ransack

  a species. I said don’t interrupt,

  we have all the time in the world

  and I can hear the steady footfall

  (that’s a joke, you may smile)

  as our oldest and wisest, worthily High Mussel

  at a hundred and forty-nine, filtering and harrumphing

  (no, you must not smile now),

  angrily kicking the gravel, and with a last sift and puff

  (no no, this is not funny, think of his powers)

  commands the interrogation to begin.’

  Lines for Wallace

  Is it not better to forget?

  It is better not to forget.

  Betrayal not to be forgotten,

  Vindictiveness not to be forgotten,

  Triumphalism not to be forgotten.

  Body parts displayed

  At different points of the compass,

  Between hanging and hacking

  The worst, the disembowelling.

  Blood raised in him, fervent

  Blood raced in him, fervent

  Blood razed in him, for ever

  Fervent in its death.

  For Burns was right to see

  It was not only on the field

  That Scots would follow this man

  With blades and war-horn

  Sharp and shrill

  But with brains and books

  Where the idea of liberty

  Is impregnated and impregnates.

  Oh that too is sharp and shrill

  And some cannot stand it

  And some would not allow it

  And some would rather die

  For the regulated music

  Of Zamyatin’s Polyhymnia

  Where nothing can go wrong.

  Cinema sophisticates

  Fizzed with disgust at the crudities

  Braveheart held out to them.

  Over the cheeks of some

  (Were they less sophisticated?)

  A tear slipped unbidden.

  Oh yes it did. I saw it.

  The power of Wallace

  Cuts through art

  But art calls attention to it

  Badly or well.

  In your room, in the street,

  Even my god if it came to it

  On a battlefield,

  Think about it,

  Remember him.

  The Battle of Bannockburn

  A Translation of ‘Metrum de Praelio Apud Bannockburn’, by Robert Baston

  Pain is my refrain, pain comes dragging its rough train.

  Laughter I disdain, or my elegy would be in vain.

  The Ruler of All, who can cause tears to stall,

  Is the true witness to call if you want any good to befall

  Those under thrall, roped-up in filthy unsilky pall.

  I weep for all that fall in that iron funeral.

  I raise my battle-lament, sitting here in my tent.

  And the blame for this event? God knows to whom it is sent!

  This is a double realm: each itches to dominate:

  Neither hands over the helm for the other to subjugate.

  England and Scotland – which one is the Pharisee?

  Each has to stand guard, and not fall into the sea!

  Hence those pumped-up factions dyed with crimson blood,

  Squads in battle-actions slaughtered crying in the mud,

  Hence this waste of men, crossed out by war’s black pen,

  Whole peoples sunk in the fen, still fighting, again and again,

  Hence white faces in the ground, hence white faces of the drowned,

  Hence huge grief is found, cries with which the stars are crowned,

  Hence wars that devastate field and farm and state.

  How can I relate each massacre that lies in wait?

  It is June Thirteen Fourteen, and here I set the scene,

  The Baptist’s head on a tureen, the battle on Stirling green.

  Oh I am not glued to ancient schism and feud,

  But my weeping is renewed for the dead I saw and rued.

  Who will lend me the water I need to baptise these forays?

  Already torrents and springs overwhelm my heart-strings

  And break the rings of my singing of better things.
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  The governor of the land has that land’s domination,

  At his slightest command a great force is in full formation.

  Huzzas from English throats; Scots in eager armour;

  Soldiers with high notes may not live up to their clamour!

  See how the English king, consulting and considering,

  Asks boldest men to bring fear to the Scots, penetrating

  Chivalry with chivalry, country into country!

  Charging the nobility to draw on every ability,

  What a brilliant band of magnates mustering and swerving!

  They want you bowing and serving! Scotland, take sword in hand!

  Infantry scenting battle crisscross county and shire.

  Sailors all afire plough seas till the halyards rattle.

  Armour-bearer and squire hasten with bridles and reins.

  Cavalry seethes and clanks, trumpeters strain their veins.

  All the belligerent ranks surge forward bloodthirsty and fierce

  (Dark death will pierce, if it wishes, those high-fives and swanks!).

  A knight mounts his horse, he is braced and bright for the fight,

  His face breathes force, his rich garb woos the sight.

  Four Germans arrive, offer free services:

  Will the English derive help from these pseudo-mercenaries?

  All I know is that arms are handed out to all;

  No one says no if the man seems handy and tall;

  Safe hands for a shield, for a lance, for a bloody field,

  Strong not to yield, skilled, war-welcoming, steeled.

  They spent the night drinking, bragging how they’d bring down the Scots.

  Their boasts were unthinking, they mouthed windy thoughts.

  They drowsed, they snored, they were superhuman, they ignored

  Fate, they soared in their dreams right overboard.

  What would they do when their banners fluttered in the sun?

  They were about to be run through, all arrogance undone!

  The herald blares his horn, the baleful battle-news is born.