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Index of poems:
- An Imaginary Painting
- Blackstock Road
- Gaelic and the Bagpipes
- Glenuig Song
- Made the Land of Heroes a Wilderness
- Stranger's Eyes
- What Colour Silence?
A woman sits in the lamplight, her head bent over a china bowl, her eyes closed, she's still half dreaming. Her thick ginger hair has been down skirting all night, now strands fall over a face we'd call plain, but then men found that puffed paleness beautiful. The lamp gives off an amber light and the whiff of paraffin she'll cover later with lavender oil. Into cold water she'll waken and the hard pillow lines of sleep will lift out of her pinking cheek. Or so I imagine it might have been when women washed in bowls at dawn, and lamplight smelled. Face creams have not been invented yet, but she has inherited tricks for beauty like handstands for shining eyes pinching for rosiness biting for plump red lips smiling for lines going kind ways and singing for a lilt in speech. As looking glasses are rare and tainted, this woman belongs to herself. She feels good in her skin, At home in her beauty. Whole within.
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Blackstock Road
© Janis Mackay
The grimmest place was Blackstock Road, Finsbury park. I had the sofa, Was 19. When the girls, who would do anything to get on, had gone to their rooms with Chocolate Revels and vibrators I watched the big knitted hatted men in doorways, and the man in the bedsit above the Halal meat shop across the street. I watched him take off his bloody overall, and saw his pyjamas were underneath. Neither of us had curtains. Watching him climb into bed I felt life fold up and rut into a few joyless yards. Shop below, bed above, air nowhere. Did he come from wide Eastern plains to shrink the whole globe into this? In the morning he put it on again - the blood. Seeing him in that pink meat shop, cutting flesh, knowing he was ready for bed The wretchedness fell into me and I turned around caught the overnight bus from Victoria, and left.Back to top
Gaelic and the Bagpipes
© Janis Mackay
The great piper's seated in his highland kitchen where the heart is ripped out. 'So yea want tae hear the beast?' he says, and he blows the beast to life. His eyes close on Fonnica and Microwave. He's back by range, peat and flame, blowing so there'll be less forgetting and spines that wing. The English, that fits ill, loosens into the mother tongue that knits and lilts. He blows a raw and ancient skirling, straightens the stooped to a stirring. Easing his shame that after five centuries there's not a Macdonald left in Glenuig, and his ancestral highland seat is a refuge from his flat in Leith. When the New Year is in he'll leave Moidart to teach the city Gaelic and the bagpipes where people photograph him. Even us. Even here. We flash. Snap. Catch the beast in his kitchen.Back to top
I saw a stag antlered in the glen I saw a hind motionless, and then I saw the night fall upon the fields A thousand stars like black and silver seals. I heard a gull cry to the lashing tide I heard a wave break like a taken bride I heard your voice, though sure you were not there Then willed that flesh form in the salt fresh air.
Made the Land of Heroes a Wilderness
© Janis Mackay
Who’d be child to this land wears an unravelled bodice. Wrap me up in your peaty arms - go on, show me yon hidden things, utter through me your cries, songs, groans. As the blue bottle maps the caravan glass The grey Atlantic spreads, The lit thin motionless Birch grows And in a bowl of green and quiet land A dozen roofiess crofts stand Crumbling their lament to wind, rain, sun, Harbouring ragwort, cans and thorn. Crofters that tilled, planted, darned - blown on. The roofs are cirrus, stratus, black thick, moon, Only the tourist-foot falls on the flagstones Where I hunch down home by the rust broken bracken - dream back… To watch Mhairi Macgilleain bend her head to come in - like prayer, We're in God's house now. She can’t see me, but shivers the way you do When there's spirits around. She’s thin, worn like the weather and singing The space between her voice and the air. She fits in. Knows things, she’d keen to learn we've forgotten. She sits to brush her hair Hoping it won’t mean another bairn. In the corner the thatch lets in rain. There’s a ripping under her ribs And the land's gashed. So they'll go - cleared - Leaving salt winds to moan down the thatching And the byre door to swing. I am your orphaned offspring Hunched in the shadows of your old stone shells Hunting a Hansel* and stories untold. Mhairi Macgilleain is sucking wheIks. The wind soughs down the empty glen. * A Hansel is a good luck gift given at times of celebration, often to babies.
Stranger's Eyes
© Janis Mackay
I see you in the village (between the antique and electrical shops) And avoid the search light sweep of the dark aching eyes Trawling for love. Having smiled at you once I dare not meet your gaze now Or I’ll be a gasping fish Swallowed in your net They howl, these net eyes Haunt and cry a raga of homelessness Break into cars, walk into bedrooms Fall into baffled arms Indian man in a Sussex village Seeking asylum in a stranger's eyes. Perhaps it's because I too have sent them, these letters That I dare not unwrap yours I know their desperate contents, come Stay, dance, say my name Undress me Like you I have swept the streets, the bars Flashed blue hooks, offered wide glass pools to dive in Have been far out of my head Needing to be taken in Aching for India.
What Colour Silence?
© Janis Mackay
When you look deep into a grey sea It is full of a soft mystery. My silence is a foot dipped in. After too long wearing the blue dress I wonder am I turning strange, fear The wide white silence, the bleak open space. My words fly out of a silent grey A disguised calm, red noise at the core. May I grow intimate with silence; A bride at peace with the nothingness A soft will, not filling up the days But noticing the infinite stars In the black unknown infinite sky.
