Culloden
February 2006

The battlefield gleams
intermittently
beneath a weak sun
on light snow
but remains cold
and still
 
down past the silent graves
[speaking volumes]
past the monument
the clamour and clash
of battle
the stramash and passion
the heat and smoke
hot blood turning cold
as it met the air
of an April day
 
Highlanders slaughtered
like wounded cattle
the Government injured carried
to the dark bloodied cottage
where crude instruments
cut short their silence
or their screams

on a late February afternoon
the fatal landscape
shines blackly
as the thin snow
melts over peat,
looking like puddles
of old blood
between the tussocks




still searching

there is a place
I would call home
if it was known to me.
I tell myself
when I see its face
there will be
a moment of faint
remembering
before the blinding light
of certainty

it has a valley
water-filled and bright,
sometimes
on stormy days
dim and dark and drear.
it has an air
that heals
that shimmers
with a summer haze.
it has a winter cold that sears

there are hills
wearing now snow caps
now purple dressed,
then dark with rock
[poking through
winter-dead growth]
bare and black with rain,
and then again
it has the rough call
of game birds
and the sibilance
of cygnets grown too big
to whisper secrets
to the grave,

secrets
ancient as its own beginnings
held fast in bog
and locked in the memory
of the rock,
it holds life
in peat pockets
in water margins
on islands
even on rock face
where silver-green lichen clings
as tenaciously
as human life once hung
in the balance of the seasons

it holds my secret -
my unknown forebear
strode that watery path
climbed that heather slope
scaled that rock over there
and lived the hard free life.
I see him
his feet summer-bare,
deep in the peat.
I wish he’d turn,
pause a moment
look up
so I could see his face
then I would know the place
and it would know me,
and I would tell myself
I have come home.

Pluscarden


white robed monks
at their devotions
sun pours
through stained glass
with
the brilliance
of gems
ruby
sapphire
amethyst
motes of light
in motion
 
with soft sure steps
the monks trace
the ritual 
of their grace
one swings the censer
kneels.
they bow their heads
take out the wafers
wipe the chalice
with a white cloth
the silence feels
both cool
and hot

the coloured air
billows with incense
plain song flows
like balm
filling the sore 
and empty places
 
lay people turn
with open faces
eyes meet
hands touch
‘peace be with you’
 
the side chapels
are blessed
only after the monks
those 
in a state of grace
receive the host
 
the nun returns
to her front row seat
unexpectedly
she is black.

a woman 
in a yellow coat
cries into her cupped hands
 
the chant dies away.
genuflections.
one stays 
to keep company
with the host.
two stay and
with quiet tread
clear away the ritual
leaving the silence
where even the incense cloud
is now still,
suspended,
the outside world
offers farm sounds
tractors
with a trail of
squabbling gulls,
wind in the trees
birdsong.
the air is full
of pollen
and turned-earth smell.
a monk
hands clasped inside
his sleeves
paces slowly 
through the trees

Sutherland:
land of forever


bedrock and water
land of forever
the raw unfinished
mountains
already have
the arrogance of age

lochans black
with depth
blue with sky
the constantly changing
light
and landscape
leads you back
back
back
to before

when lands collided
and changed course
skimming across oceans
they were nothing more
than slow-motion pebbles
touching down on the equator
a little skip on North America
veering off
and splash-landing
in the present

ice came
carving and shaping
the huge bulk
a massive sculpture
appearing out of the block
of land
that is Scotland
scooping out
depressions and hollows
clefts
and deeps
beyond imagining

there is silence
profound
and almost crushing
to the ear
it makes you hear
your own heartbeat
if you listen long enough
and can get beyond
you hear the beat
of the earth
a deep slow throb
and the sloosh
of bodily fluids
keeping it alive

in the shadows
of the glens
there have been
darknesses

a scattering
of homesteads
a clutch of trees
on a craggy hilltop
a Guinness-tinted
burn, the froth
of the falls at its head,
and always
the twin blues
sky and sea
sea and sky
reflecting
affecting
each other

it asks nothing of you
it gives everything
a place apart
and beyond
this land of forever

hoodies
on Skye


the hoodies advanced
on heavy feet
their unrelieved grey-black
added fear and dread
a swaggering conviction
their shoulders spoke
you knew they could take you
in a single blow

they are assured of their cool
the black hood boys
one glint of their eyes
and the duck pond froze 
and the size of their beaks
and the raucous caws
show the supremacy
of the great hooded crows

loch katrine


far from the rush and roar
drifting up the loch
all lush hills and
occasional farmsteads.
swish-pad of paddles
on the steamer,
crowds of passengers
washed out to a watermark
by the beauty
of katrine
 
smoke from a damp fire -
next the sluice gates
a dour lodge
built for one night’s
royal stay.
in the distance
Rob Roy’s place
of life and death –
homestead and
MacGregor graveyard –

pilgrimage
Americans
bonnets and plaid

there is life now
in the glacial gash
that once slashed
this land.
there is peace,
the pace soft and quiet,
honed by millennia,
ice-scraped hills
softened by trees.
no demarcation lines,
a track
a service road
and a host
of invisible beings
tending the memories.




searching loch lomond


scattered shale
imported granite chippings
line banks bonnie with leaf
and lapping water.
ancient trees
roots exposed -
rock protected -
poised like stick insects.
 
we follow the shadows
in and out
of woods,
mossy stones,
lichened branches.
feet ancient and modern
walk this path
singing the song
of ages
 
returning
sunwise
we catch the gleams
of setting sun,
the gleams
of memory
not our own.
we listen for
the ancestral heart beat -
is it here?

Landseer  Landscape
 

Tasting air, the painted stags read
the signs, gather their scattered hinds
perhaps already ripe with seed.  The heather
sings an ancient song and, where rocks crowd close,
streams speak in familiar tongues.
The inn with ale and fiddle and good hearth,
welcomes no painted people, though red cheeked
and whisky-softened like fine leather.
And I a stranger in their midst – not unfamiliar
with their consonant-heavy words, their music and
the hardness of their living; familiar with the unbreathed air
of glens; familiar the soft earth-taste of water,
air-borne mewing buzzard
and the lapwing’s call across the marshy waste.


How then is this wild land my home
and how the people kin to one who, kinless,
walks alone, without a word of language. And why
the music in my bones, why the very sight of weave and
weft of plaid should make me weep.
My different hardships don't compare;
no killings, wholesale slaughter, rape, no child
torn from my breast while innocent I sleep,
no ship to take me far from all I love and cherish
to a new and harder life, so sheep can take my place.


When did I have wild curls the colour of ripe chestnuts?
When the bit of lace and ribbon holding back
that raging mane I bore with pride? When
did the silk, sea-blue and green, cease
to swish and hide the dainty cambric
of petticoat and camisole?
When did the carriage – four horses
not just two – forbear to take me overland
to the soft sea crossing, duty bound,
to call on family ruling on a different isle
with that familiar steady hand.


And when did my roots sink so deep,
so strong and fathomless, in velvet peat.
I feel I am a mighty tree whose place in history
is assured, so much I've witnessed, so many
gatherings I've blessed within my shade. My roots
spread far beneath the braes, beneath the oceans,
minches, lochs until they reach, connecting, every far-flung
kinsman speaking still the music of our Kingdom of the Gael.    


And in my heart-wood hidden fast
are secrets more than you could know of
times just past, and times long gone so there
are simply shadows on the land as if in one enormous
swoop my people disappeared, grasped by a single giant hand.

Eigg


Each footfall echoes softly in the still unsullied air
and powdery clouds of flower fragrance hang above my path.
Arpeggios of lark-song lift each weary foot in turn
and sacrificing curiosity, pink eared lambs escape in tall marsh grass.
Faintly in the distance, the quivering tones of clarsach offer
welcome to this promised land; heart of my mother's father's father.

At every turning, time becomes a moving living being, 
when waves of distant Past come rolling in slow motion.
A Present, new and barely comprehended, opens as they break.
Often planned and keenly visioned, Future rests as deep and dark as ocean
where misty shapes of island-neighbours draw me on; on stumbling legs
I walk along the tarmac road from end to end of Eigg.




Eigg II


The old croft workings are starred with daisies
spotted with sheep,
dotted with rusting machines.
This is the patchwork of the men,
generations seaming the edges
with stout walls,
patterning with squares of
ploughing and digging.

Now blue pipes carry water from the burns,
rough grass fills the furrows 
and broken walls shower the hillside
harder than the soft rain.
Sheep, the reason for the empty islands,
are their mainstay, white wool
prized, sturdy lambs cherished
though their voracity steals the daisies.




Rum


Paved tracks lead to the old dwellings,
stones dislodged and tumbled, 
marsh encroached.
In places velvet dark water 
runs over, enriching the
woodland.
Bluebells and primroses,
honeysuckle sit side by side,
unseasonably but yet
companionably.
Ferns grow on the shaded
broken walls, doorways
still beckon, gaping now
with the rictus of death.
The hearth is dead; no woman
tends it, offering hospitality.

The shielings still provide summer
shelter; gulls nest there now. 
The men who count them year
by year keep open the old tracks,
bridging the worst with mesh-
covered boards, handrail 
on the short rock scramble.
You in your winter boots
and summer feet needed
only a staff, your skirt wet-
brown from the peat.

Who are you? Who lingers here
just out of sight? Whose shawl hangs
on the nail in the roof beam? Who sits
in the night-dark corner when the door
is closed and the hearth hot, who sits
and reaches for his whistle from the mantle?
Who stirs the pot of fish and sweet
herb gathered that day in the dew?
Who lies in the cradle, hooded against
winter drafts? Who? And who? And who?

Eroded by the great leveller
Time, your jottings on the landscape
are weathered now and fading,
Your line continues, 
if it does at all, in Nova Scotia.
For you no choosing of a
distant land; rounded up like 
frightened cattle, separated from 
home, from life, from creels.
Folk memory lives on here, but
your jigs and reels hide 
in another culture's music.




Islay


far
glass shards blue
break 
strewn
on the beach

heat
wall of haze
ripples
the gaze
days in mirage

calls
buzzard mews
shrill
red bills
oyster catchers run

frozen 
wild tableaux
deer
hen harrier
poised hare

all poems copyright Sue Tordoff