The solstice poem

Posting today for the winter solstice, this poem took its inspiration from William Dunbar, that marvellous Makar, who may or may not have taken his surname from the town where I now live. It's known his family had land in the area. At any rate, I like to think there's a connection. This is a dark poem, and I make no apology for that. Sometimes it really is dark.

This poem was written in 2009 and first published in The floorshow at the Mad Yak Café (Red Squirrel Press, 2010).

The Low Point

(after ‘A Meditatioun in Wyntir’, by William Dunbar, c 1460- c 1520)

“Dirk and drublie days” right enough,

but the heavens are not always sable –

some days there are true skies, and a wind

shifted from Siberia, to seek unfurnished skin.

Today the longer dark hours are filled

with entertainments then curtailed. It’s hard

to imagine what true darkness meant

for plays, poems, music – summer pursuits all.

Scratching by candle, each scrivener wrought

on quires of deckled paper, by goosequill and gallol,

words of wisdom, terms of love and learning,

some meters of beauty to catch future’s eye.

Warring motives lay on from every side.

Despair’s the easy one now, so much bad news

in these cold times, suggest the one

begets the other. Patience dismissed,

and fortune damned – predestiny leaves no room

for innocent actions. We may as well be doomed

as blessed, and with an equal chance. Causality

is on a winter break, along with warmth and light.

Slyly, with some pretence of favour, chilly whispers

question why I carry forward a life that soon

I’ll leave behind, with loves and friendships

broken links, unconnected leads and empty ears.

The forgetfulness of age is a brotherly service,

for remembrance of ourselves in youth

would give us pain – the way we were,

the things we did, the chances missed.

And death to come is final leveller;

low or high, we similarly stoop to enter

the same one-way system, a singularity,

the dimming doorway to a hall of nothing.

But yet, four minutes today, five tomorrow,

the nights imperceptibly shorten, and at some point

I’ll know times have changed, that summer pleasures

lie ahead, and will return. The ball rolls round.

Copyright  © Colin Will, 2009, 2010

The New Year poem

I don't celebrate Hogmanay - never mind why. I prefer to go somewhere with Jane for a walk in surroundings new to us or familiar, with a piece-box of salmon sandwiches (pink salmon, of course) and a flask of black coffee. It's been our thing for so many years that I've forgotten when it started.

This poem was written in the mid-1990s and published in 1999 in the poem-card Roundabout Livingston. The poem-cards were collected and put out as a Kindle e-book as Recycled Cards (available from Amazon).

The Ne'erday blaws

With no time for boozy sentimentality
we picnic by the sea each year.
Seeing existence as continuous
we have now no need of bells, besides,
there are, in each of us,
too many bitter thoughts
and sad reflections at this time.

Better to be blown by the first gusts of January,
seeing a brown and silty sea,
mounded by the gales,
appearing higher than the roadway.
We walk through an empty Culross,
discoverers of a new history.
We smile at each other
as rain slaps our faces,
crazy in alone being here
and delighting in being alone
but for the sermon-ready rooks
hopping solemnly in the shelter of the abbey ruins.

At North Berwick, past the socket
of an old eruption - green ash and purple blocks -
we turn a corner and hear the clicks
of crossbills feeding in the stunted pines;
on the sands a vortex of waders dodges each wave.

In Crail harbour
a seagull becomes part of the reflection,
paddling through windows, walls and lobster-pots.
It pauses before a mountain of floating snow
pretending to be a cloud -
the alchemy of winter skies.
In the sunset we drive home,
the light dimming quickly
as we cross the bridge.
The flicking cables make
a silent film of our flight
arching over a glittering Forth.


We walk through our local streets
seeing "For Sale" signs like corpse-markers
on a medieval battlefield.
The season calls for the placement of tokens
in graveyards - a colourful splash,
for Scotland's towns are mostly drab,
dull dwelling-places merely.
It reminds me of Black Forest window-boxes -
all those salvias defying the grim green spruce.
In our first winter in Mid Calder,
walking through the foggy woods
I heard, unseen, the calls of whooper swans,
an eerie sound at the time,
but no more significant than
"Here's tae us, wha's like us?"

"See yis a' next year?"
And I don't think.

We'll be looking out to some sea,
planning the fierce joys of sudden summers,
the new sights and novelties
reflected in each other,
for what we do best
we do best together.

At our ease we've grown,
and growth, if anything,
is what is meant by
what we are.

Copyright © Colin Will, 1999, 2015

The Raga poem

I've long been a lover of Indian classical music. I find it moving, absorbing and constantly interesting. The forms and instruments are varied, although Western music lovers will probably be most familiar with the raga form, played on the sitar. I think my introduction to Indian music was probably as a teenager, watching Ram Gopal, an Indian dancer, on black-and-white TV.

Later, as an adult, I heard, as did many others, Ravi Shankar playing sitar with Alla Rakha on tabla. I listened to many other musicians - Bismillah Khan, who played shehnai (a kind of shawm), Alla Rakha on the sarod, and many others. I suppose my favourite musician was Nikhil Banerjee, a master of the sitar, and my favourite raga is Raga Sindhu Bhairavi. It's a morning rag, haunting and wistful, but paradoxically it's usually played at the conclusion of a concert.

So I tried to write a poem which contained the same mood as the raga, but it came out as an evening meditation. Oh well. The poem was first published in Seven Senses, Diehard, 2000.


Raga Sindhu Bhairavi

High dust reddens the sunset.
Eyes stare over the Ganges to an infinite question.
As the rag begins, wistfulness falls;
the slow, stretched bass lines evoke nostalgia
for places never seen, times only imagined,
peace abstractly contemplated.
The river-music braids deep surges
and snaking surface currents,
exploring without rhythm,
stiffening gradually into form.
When the tabla enters, its beat channels the flow.
Within the tal strangely liquid stresses
impose a flexible constraint.

Even Ganesha, dancing at dusk, holds a full-bellied grace,
and dark-eyed gopis crowd to touch his broken tusk.
Their worlds transform in the hot and dusty dark;
their wombs will quicken and bring forth sons
nimble as Krishna, fluting the stream's song,
to be all their husbands never are.
The dark water sparkles with floating prayers
until they snuff and sizzle beyond the last believer,
blessed only by a golden moon.



Copyright ©  Colin Will, 2000, 2015

Translated poems 3

These poems were translated by my friends Helen and Maureen. Some wine was involved in the process, but I don't think any poems were harmed that day. I think they enjoyed it. I know I did.

La Croissance

(En mémoire de Edwin Morgan)

Déposez une graine dans le sol,

ajoutez un peu d'eau,

et la croissance semble inévitable,

à part accidents et incidents.

Et les graines forment des pousses

et des racines des petites touffes

des cellules à division rapide.

Sept générations de lignées cellulaires,

sept groupes de divisions,

et vous avez une plante adulte -

laitue, navet, courgette

ou arbre bébé.

Et au sein de ces machines vertes

les germes de la generation suivante,

comme des poupées matriochka, prêtes

à la fécondation.

C’est la même chose dans le royaume des animaux,

sept générations pour produire

une image finale, l'être complet.

Mais pas terminé, parce que ça serait la fin.

Nous sommes encore un croissance, mais à un rythme plus lent,

adjutant du volume, de l'expérience, de la sagesse,

en créant nos propres semences; une chaîne de fabrication

des gens, comme nous, mais différents.

Les graines de l'esprit croissent aussi,

et les paroles d'un poète vivront toujours,

une expansion nébuleuse de la conscience commune,

de Mercure à Saturne et au-delà.

Originally published as Growth in Strawberries, an anthology in memory of Edwin Morgan, and then in  The propriety of weeding, Red Squirrel Press, 2012

La Vallée Perdue

Descendez une pente raide à un ruisseau

dans une gorge profonde coupe, traversée

par une passerelle en bois. Baissez les yeux,

pour la lueur de l'eau brune transparente

glisser sur les pierres submergées,

descender des cascades courtes

crachant des bulles mousseuses.

La piste tourney abruptement de l'autre côté,

se tord entre des gardiens de granit.

Ensuite il y a les roches qui dansent

sur la couronne instable d'un éboulement géant.

Le dernier obstacle est une étroite corniche,

sans filet ci-dessous.

Soudain, voici le vallon caché,

fond plat avec du gravier de rivière

trop large pour avoir été déposé par
ce petit ruisseau. D’un rocher grand

comme une maison pousse un sorbier,

qui fair des dessins de bruyére pourpre

sur les pentes, touffes de maigres touffes d'herbes

qui nourissent à peine les moutons robustes.

Tout autour, une couronne de pics

exposent leurs côtés ombrageuse

definée par des taches de neige.

C'est là où on se sent bien à l'aise 

Qu'on est vraiment chez soi .

Originally published as The Lost Valley in Z2O, and then in The propriety of weeding, Red Squirrel Press, 2012.

Dépliant d’Instruction

Enlevez l'emballage extérieur

de la boîte dans laquelle

votre nouvel amant a été livré.

Détachez avec soin le matériel de l'emballage

de polystyrene – ces petit morceaux

de rêves et de souvenirs soldés

des amours passés, qu’apportent toujours

les nouveaux amants.

Pauvres chéris, ils n’en peuvent rien.

Familiarisez-vous avec les caractéristiques de sécurité

de votre acquisition, surtout du disjoncteur

qui garde l’âme de la surcharge émotionnelle.

Il faut construire progressivement le courant

de ce nouveau modèle. N’oubliez pas comment

votre dernier amour a échoué, spectaculairement?

Il ne faut pas le répéter.

Notez comment l’onglet «A» se adapte à la fente «B»

doucement et fermement.

C’est un offer complexe, alors n’attendez pas

la perfection dés le début. Ne quittez pas

à la première faillite. Cela arrive parfois

que toutes les pièces sont bien en function.

Réparez, lubrifiez, nourrisez, accessoirissez.

Ajoutez denouveaux composants, grandissez avec votre amant.

Ce produit ne porte pas de garantie à vie

mais il a été conçu pour vous donner des années de bonheur,

et nous espérons que vous serez entièrement satisfait.

First published as The Book of Instructions in By Grand Central Station We Sat Down and Wept, and then in The propriety of weeding, Red Squirrel Press, 2012.

 Séparation; un ghazal

La mer de roche-tourbillonné est une écume d’ oeufs,

et à la limite de la marée, je te laisse ici.

Je marche en célébrant le vent,

et à la fin de la route, je te laisse ici.

Les récoltes des haies de l’arrière saison

douces, sombre baies, que je te laisse ici,

Et si jus sucré devrait s’attarder sur tes lèvres

qu’il représente le baiser je te laisse ici.

Si je pouvais faire ralentir le temps

J’en voudrais plus avec toi, avant que je te laisse ici.

Le froid trouve des interstices entre foulard et manteau,

et donc, bien emitoufflée, je te laisse ici.

Je sais que les larmes dans tes yeux naissant du vent,

et pas parce que tu êtes triste, je te laisse ici,

Mais comme je me détourne de ma tête et me dirige chez moi

Je sais que je laisse une meilleure partie de moi, comme je te laisse ici.

First published as Parting; a ghazal, in The Eildon Tree, and then in The propriety of weeding, Red Squirrel Press, 2012.

This is probably the final batch of translated poems I'm posting at this time. There may be more in future. 

The heatwave poem

And then there was the year we took a gîte near Bergerac, in the Dordogne region, taking our eldest son and his then girlfriend with us. The temperature was around 40 C, and we were in a car with plastic seats. It was, to say the least, uncomfortable. At some point, quite early on as I recall, our son and his girlfriend decided to cut short their stay with us and travel to her parents' place in Germany. We drove them to the station in Perigeux. It felt like a door had closed.

The poem was first published in Seven Senses (Diehard, 2000). 

Red

Only movement cooled,
driving round each curving canyon lip
towards Rocamadour.

We parked on a hairpin loop
for a comfort stop behind bushes,
and here the heat hit in slow gusts;
awesome heat bounced from red cliffs
to black road,
and up to faces
already embarrassed by the sun.
S. couldn’t go, afraid of creepie-crawlies
creeping.

In the town, J. bought a hat
with a silly flower - all the shop had -
and all the time
Moorish heat, hell-hot,
dessicated lungs,
plundered our will.
In the street’s shade
hot dark air led us to the Black Virgin,
a sooty little gnome in a hot grotto.

At Padirac, our roasting queue shuffled forward
before descending the Gouffre’s cool throat
opening to a cavernous cathedral,
out-doming any human shrine.

Afterwards, every cave, each mango sorbet,
any church or roofed bastide was welcome,
until Perigeux,
where we knew, at last,
we’d lost our son to someone else.

Heat-blind, heat-dumb, heat-deadened,
eyes full of dried tears,
we couldn’t watch their train depart.
We trudged from nave to altar,
unblessed, and too hot to touch.



Copyright © Colin Will 2000

Translated poems 2

A second batch of poems translated into French by Leila Forissier.

Quelconque

Où les vieux messieurs achètent-ils leurs vestes beiges?
J'ai cherché dans les boutiques, mais personne en vogue
n'en vend. Il doit y avoir une chaîne,
un négociant sur catalogue, spécialisé dans le beige.

Il y a une variante - taupe - la couleur
de la soupe aux champignons, mais c'est quand même beigeâtre,
une non-couleur, la nuance de l'ennui,
du 'j'ai trop la flemme pour être coloré'.

Le beige ferait camouflage
dans un désert morne, disons le Gobi
en octobre, lorsque le vent des steppes
balaie de sable beige les plaines infinies.

Caracolant parmi les rares herbes grège
de petits rongeurs beiges creusent, élevant leurs petits
tapis sous terre attendant d'être beiges
pour se fondre dans le paysage désolé.

Le beige doit bien avoir une vertu salvatrice,
un trait qui m'a échappé; un fait beige
qui en justifie la fade existence.
Je cherche encore des arcs-en-ciel beiges.

 Published as Nondescript in Sushi & Chips (2006)

Tr Leila Forrisier

 Sept Lunes

La première lune est tout juste décroissante,
et pâle, haut dans le ciel bleu-jour.

La deuxième est le tranchant d’une épée,
à minuit, Auvergne, découpant
le velours jonché d’étoiles.

La troisième porte un halo,
présage de neige.

La quatrième lune est un rond de beurre
dans une chaude nuit de moisson, étouffée de désir.

La cinquième lune, éclipsée par la terre,  
est d’un rouge boueux, augurée de prophéties.

La sixième est occultée à maintes reprises
par des nuages vacillants.

La septième lune est celle
que l’on ne doit pas nommer.

 Published as Seven Moons in Sushi & Chips (2006)

Tr Leila Forrisier

Le Crochet

C'était la pièce sous les toits
et l'été nous baignions dans la touffeur.
Étendus sur le lit, certains de ne pas dormir
jusqu’à ne plus nous soucier de trouver le sommeil.
La sueur perlait entre nos corps
et le drap au-dessous. De sexe, bien-sûr,
il n'était pas question, tout contact proscrit.

La lune montait dans le coin
du velux, blanche
tranche de tarte, s'arrondissant
en pizza d'argent. Le souvenir me vint,
comme s'il venait de m'échapper,
de la présence d'un loquet
sur le châssis de la fenêtre, que quelque part
se trouvait une perche munie d'un crochet,
crochet qui n'allait que dans ce loquet,
et rien d'autre.

Je me dressai de mon côté du lit,
l'humidité montant à nouveau
de mon dos, l'arrière de mes cuisses.
Le fourre-tout, le placard de la souillarde,
était notre cache pour les choses
dont nous ne pensions jamais avoir besoin
et elle était là. Debout
sur le lit, je levai le loquet
et laissai entrer l'air conditionné lunaire.

 Published as The Hook in The Propriety of Weeding (2012)

Tr Leila Forrisier

Translated poems 1

I'm going to post translations of some of my poems here in the next few weeks. These are poems I had translated into French for my trip to the 31st Festival de la Poésie, Trois-Riviéres, Quebec, October 2015.

Here are the first three:

Notes de terrain, de janvier à avril

Un cormoran longe les courbes de la rivière.
Avant même que le Lednock Burn la rejoigne,
L’Earn est à ras bord, et file à toute allure. Je regarde
depuis le pont, ne tentant même pas d’estimer
le volume d’eau charrié. La pluie a été battante,
mais c’est aussi la fonte des neiges.

La neige hivernale vint et partit,
vint et resta, partit, et revint.
Le froid flottait sur les vents sous des semaines
de ciels gris. Des songes de mort,
la conscience de mourir, sur la pointe des pieds, passaient
de pièce en pièce, jusqu’au matin,
annoncé par l’horloge, plutôt que par le jour.

********************************

Des chevreuils paissent sur le coteau couvert de foin
en pleine vue d’un trafic irrépressible.
Ils sont parfois parmi les nettes rangées vertes
de blé d’hiver ou d’orge de printemps.
Je les compte toujours, désappointé
s’il s’en trouve moins d’une douzaine.

Sur une berge ensoleillée une écume citronnée de coucous,
dans les bois des anémones étoilées, des chélidoines
et de timides violettes. Je me rappelle un ruisseau
dans le bois de Twenty Shilling, une marche printanière,
un cerf victime de la saison, morceaux
de chair blanche, touffes de fourrure trempée,
et bois dépouillés en souvenir.

********************************

Les changements commencèrent un jour de ciel d’agneline.
Je marchais sur la rive dans la senteur de l’ail des ours,
chatons sur les bouleaux. L’eau glissait
presque en silence, la gravité l’attirant
vers la Tay, et le réservoir infini de la mer.

Les collines brillaient au soleil de midi.
Les mélèzes parmi les sempervirents, bruns depuis l’automne,
prenaient une teinte vert doré.
L’éclosion était imminente dans tous les arbres
le long de la rive, et la terre fraîchement tournée attendait.
Dans la maison, elle se leva, s’habilla, mangea un peu.
Son corps avait décidé qu’il pouvait, pour le moment,
continuer. 

Published as Field Notes, January to April, in The propriety of Weeding (2012) and made into a filmpoem (Field Notes) by Alastair Cook (available on Vimeo)
.

TR Leila Forrissier

Vol d’identité

Les bécasseaux sont de minuscules fées, dansant, esquivant les vagues;
la semaine passée c’étaient les colombes éléphants qui bousculaient les moineaux
hors de la mangeoire. Demain encore elle s’en ira
fouiller l’épave du langage, former des liens
de connexions au hasard. La structure tient,
la même certitude de syntaxe règne,
mais un caprice empreint le choix de ses noms
et ses comment-ca-s’appelle - mots descriptifs.
Elle s’abîme, pour la troisième longue reprise,
dans ce lent bain d’acide, la soupe effervescente
qui scinde le mot du monde, la connaissance du souvenir.
C’est un doux fondu, comme une sculpture à contresens
Avant que l’armature n’affleure, puis elle aussi
se corrode, s’effondre, et part à la dérive.

Published as Identity Theft in The Propriety of Weeding, 2012)

TR: Leila Forrissier

Une brève histoire de Xi’An

Les Grandes Murailles de Chang’An séparaient autrefois
l’étranger de l’habitant, le barbare du citoyen.

Plus maintenant. Nous flânons le long du vaste rempart
entre les parapets, contemplons la ville en bas sous le smog,

prenons des photos grises sur des téléphones. Un imposant guerrier T’ang
traînaille jusqu’au corps de garde, brillant plastron

de résine moulée, casque couronné de plumes de nylon rouge.
Dans un temple secondaire à la Grande pagode de l’Oie

je fais trois révérences intrépides au Bouddha. Un petit homme
se faufile à l’intérieur, regarde des deux côtés avant de s’agenouiller.

Il n’aurait pas eu de problème, je crois, même vu,
et il est sans doute mieux pour lui d’accomplir les bons gestes.

L'observation ne suffit pas à certaines expériences,
qui demandent de se lancer. Dans la soirée arrive l'annonce

d’un nouveau dinosaure à plumes dans la province du Liaoning,
mais ce n’est pas une nouveauté. Ainsi advinrent les oiseaux.

Published as A short history of Xi'An in The floorshow at the Mad Yak Café (2010)

Tr : Leila Forrisier

The poem in Scots

Back in 1996 I was on an Arvon course at Moniack Mhor, near Beauly, with tutors Bill Herbert and Kathleen Jamie, and Kathleen set a wee exercise to write poems based in characters in old postcards she handed round the table. That's an exercise I sometimes do in my workshops these days, as it can often generate good poems.

So I started off writing the poem in English and, frankly, it was boring. But my granny's Aberdeenshire voice came into my head, and I wrote the poem again in Scots, hearing her Doric accent. Prior to this I had never written in Scots, but it just seemed so natural this time. It was accepted by Lallans magazine, so it became my first poem in Scots to be published.

It was collected in Seven Senses (Diehard Publishers, 2000).

A postcaird frae posteritie

Aits are dreebled in the wheel’s ee

as the kingle stane is ca’ed bi the haun.

The meal-tub’s big roon lid

has thon ziggie-zaggie threids

aa roon the rim.

It’s efternin, we’re here bi the hoose wa,

lukin lang an staunin stiff

sae naethin smeers the siller pents

inside the mannie’s big-leggit box o tricks.

We’re in wir Sabbath-best black-an-white claes,

me wi a mutch oan ma heid.

That tint oan the caird’s a fake,

life here’s no like that - colourfae.

Spinnle clicks, stane grinds,

pipe is sooked

tae keep it bleezin,

cardin kames clatter thegither.

We’re here tae shaw

wir wee bit wey o life,

afore it gangs ootbye,

bit ye faddle us, wi yer

“Haud still noo!”

an “Staun this wey!”

It’s aye the same,

ye canny dae yer wark

fur fowk speirin at ye.

An fit’s tae dae?

Ma laddie’s boat is beached,

an sae is he, sae are we aa,

aye turnin, ziggie-zaggie.

Copyright © Colin Will 1997, 2000

The archaeology poem

In 1992 Jane, our younger son Duncan and I went on a cycling holiday in the Loire Valley. It was billed as 'Cycling for Softies' but that wasn't entirely accurate. Our base and starting point was the village of Montreuil-Bellay. Here we left our cases and were introduced to the mysteries of the puncture repair kit, and cycling in France. Our clothes and necessities for the remainder of our stay were packed into two rear panniers each, and we set off the following day on our circuit. The actual cycling wasn't a problem, and it was a great way to see the French countryside. We stopped off at our pre-booked hotels, each one chosen for its gastronomic excellence and the ability of the proprietaires to cope with sweaty cyclists. We stayed two nights in each hotel, giving us a clear day between to explore each new area.

We explored Fontevraud, Saumur, Chinon and the Loire chateaux, eating well and enjoying the local Loire red wine, made from the Cabernet franc grape. The chateau described in The Sleeping Beauty is at Ussy, which was closed when we visited, but cycling inland we came to the original medieval village of Ussy, which had been abandoned in the 14th century due to plague. And here we came across an ongoing archaeological dig in the ancient churchyard. What we saw moved me very much, and the following poem resulted. It was first published in Seven Senses (Diehard, 2000).

Les Indigènes

Near the chateau of the Sleeping Beauty
we saw the skulls of babies unearthed
in a medieval graveyard;
another skeleton enfolded in her pelvic grip
the bundle of tiny bones which killed her.
The graves were gridded and graphed, ending
six centuries curing in the good Loire soil;
wheelbarrows trundled round mounds of bone-flecked earth,
each fragment a domestic, personal tragedy.
The charmer prince Lionheart lies nearby,
casketed at Fontevraud,
as if his bones are different; his death cause
for a separate class of grief.

Broken at birthing or from war's decay -
all ends are too soon for those who leave
and the loving left.

The diggers were quiet, respectful,
but these sleepers were beyond awakening,
their beds now and forever unmade,
and bony mouths unkissed, unkissable.



Copyright © Colin Will, 2000

The geological poem

Some years ago I realised that rocks, minerals and geology had often inspired me to write poems. Hardly surprising, since I had studied geology in the 1970s and worked for fifteen years in the British Geological Survey library. I had the idea of collecting some of these poems into a pamphlet, with notes on the geology preceding each poem. The poems weren't necessarily about geology, but earth sciences formed some kind of trigger for the poems. I self-published the pamphlet in 2005, but it's long since out of print. A revised version is available on Kindle, as Mementoliths 2.

This poem is about the Five Sisters shale bing at Westwood, near West Calder. The distinctive shape of the bing is a feature that's being preserved, as most of the other West Lothian bings have been removed for industrial uses. But it's also about the shale mines within Calder Wood, which were open and explorable when I lived there, although they've since been bricked up.

20. Oil shale, Mid Calder

In the woods behind our home in Mid Calder the Linhouse Water cut through an outcrop of oil shale, a black and fissile deposit of curly carbonaceous claystone, laid down in lagoons. In the 1850’s James ‘Paraffin’ Young discovered you could cook this stuff, yielding a good quality mineral oil for lamps and heating. So naturally, a mining industry started up. In the beginning, the rock was mined where it outcropped, as in the Linhouse Water. Open adits were driven in from the streamside, and the shale was removed by stoop and room working, leaving pillars of rock supporting the roof. It’s quite scary, but I’ve gone in about 500 metres into the workings without coming to the end. A sobering thought, that the big beech trees of Calder Wood Park were somewhere above my head.


Five Sisters

Dry shale’s a slippery medium;
platy flakes of calcined clay
slide over each other
as I launch and leap
down the bing’s steep slope.

Heels dig deep to stabilise
on each long jump,
lunging further
than an Olympian can.

A sense of balance
becomes more important
than a sense of proportion;
fun outweighs gravity
and son-flanked father laughs
as all three skelter to the base.

The long trudge up
to the tip’s top
is an Everest epic
of back-sliding and step-kicking,
and it’s a relief to reach
the five-way summit
for the next downhill slalom.

This stuff was hewn
in oil-shale’s heyday –
retorted and refined
it lit the lamps
and oiled the guns
to blaze at Kaiser Bill
in Scotland’s first oil boom.

The waste, the waste of it all,
a red ton per barrel, tipped and piled;
flat-topped clinker mesas sat and waited
for the road-making boom to come.

Mostly shifted now,
Contentibus bottoms the by-pass,
and Addiewell’s ‘Reserved for Nature’.
But Westwood’s left, the red skirts
of the Five Sisters preserved
as industrial heritage,
now the industry’s gone.

Bing-jumping’s finished too –
my knees wouldn’t take it –
and my boys are men
and moved away.
I wonder if they recall
these pink hills of childhood,
these mountains once mined,
this discarded debris
in a paraffin playground?

Copyright © Colin Will 2005

The Hiroshima poem

It's now 70 years since the first atomic bomb - Little Boy - was dropped on Hiroshima. This poem was published in Daemon 7/8 in 2005. I read it at an event in Glasgow on Hiroshima Day that year. By coincidence, that was the day my friend Robin Cook died, and it was Tommy Sheridan who told me the news, at that very reading.


Peace and quiet

In the newsreels it’s always silent;
in-sucked dust heats to incandescence,
molten beads fountain, pillar up,
a dirty eruption. Shock waves
squeeze steam out of clear air
in annular clouds. Close-ups focus
on the boiling glow, the head,
a roiling rotisserie. Roasted birds
fall from the sky. On the ground
trees, petals, pets, people, puff
to vapour in a roar, a scream
we can’t hear. On screen
Enola Gay drones home.

In a warm autumn, shinkansen zips smoothly
through the countryside. Hinoki forests yield
trunks for torii. In little fields, clipped lines
of tea bushes suggest Versailles for taste buds,
stooks of rice straw smoulder in smudge fires,
and crows foregather in persimmon trees.
Train windows, triple-glazed, cut out outside sounds.
We’re in a steel speed capsule, streamlined,
hurtling serenely to Hiroshima.


 Copyright © Colin Will 2005

The biker poem

A long time ago, in a galaxy ... No, that's wrong. But a long time ago, when I lived in Midcalder and was working at the British Geological Survey, I got myself a moped, then a small motorbike, and then a medium-sized commuter bike - a Honda 175. So I was a biker, but not the leather-clad, tattoo-covered Hell's Angel type. I used it to get to work in the morning, and to get myself home in the evening. Most of the time I enjoyed it. I didn't like winter biking, especially in some of the cold, snowy winters we had in the 1980s. I recall driving it very slowly, with both boots sliding along the ice to keep myself upright. And I didn't like my crash, when I hit a stretch of unlit roadworks near East Calder, came off and broke my collar bone. But I loved biking on summer weekends, on country roads, the bendier the better. The road along Loch Lubnaig was my favourite, and I've written about that elsewhere.

I used to take our eldest son to school on the pillion, until I had a puncture one morning. I controlled it, having had earlier punctures, but when I told Jane about it she said, 'That's it! You're going to learn to drive a car; you're not putting my son's life in danger.' So I did, and somehow the bike didn't get used much after that. I gave it away in exchange for two bottles of wine - it wasn't worth anything more by then - and I haven't driven a motor bike since. I'm still licensed though, and some nice summer days I look back with nostalgia, and I dream about the very real pleasures of biking.

This poem was written in 1995, and published in my second collection, Seven Senses (Diehard, 2000).


The thing itself

After rain the road flashes
like a metal river.

Bends are rounded
by a shift of weight,
an eye for line, a lean;
routes unroll under pegged feet
straddling wheels.

Wind is helmet shake
and visor flutter;
head wobbles as speed twists up.
Poles flicker past
in a chuff of air;
engine notes blatter from walls
or are sucked silent in gaps.

No space for thought,
no time for calculation.
Wish into action
as action fast-forwards life.
Spray fizzles,
bees bullet the head,
smells assail, ripen, and are gone.
Between machine and rider
no decisions, destinations.



Copyright © Colin Will, 2000

The ambiguous poem

Sometimes I don't want to be crystal clear in a poem, even a short poem. Sometimes I want the reader to figure out the meaning without having it spelled out. Poems that make you work a bit tend to last longer in the memory, I believe.

This one, written as far back as 1993 and published in my first collection - Thirteen Ways of Looking At the Highlands (Diehard, 1996) - is an example. To have been explicit here would have been wrong. It's a very short poem, but probably needs reading two or three times. I've long forgotten where the particular setting was, but it was a beach with shallow water where you could walk out a considerable distance without getting out of your depth.

I haven't read it in public for years, but every time I did read it, someone would come up to me and ask, 'Did you mean ... ?' And yes, I did. The sea is a scary place, and maybe it's not always obvious why it is. Sometimes you do get out of your depth.


Tides

Walking far out in the clear green sea,
watching waves at eye height
just that little bit further,
I begin to fear, not being overcome,
but losing, for no reason,
the urge to resist letting go.



Copyright  © Colin Will 1996, 2015

The quantum physics poem

Although I worked in geological and botanical organisations, I've got a fairly broad grounding in the other sciences, and quantum physics has always fascinated me. 

Back in 1998 I walked the Fife Coastal Trail in five sections over some summer weekends, and I managed to write a poem in each section. Four of them were first published in the magazine Fife Lines, but this one wasn't taken. It did come out in Snakeskin, and in 2011 I put it in the Kindle edition of Seven Senses, where it's in the company of the other Fife walk poems. It's available from Amazon, where I've published several out-of-print titles. It pleased me to imagine Fife fishermen named Heisenberg and Schrödinger, and to place the uncertainty principle and Schrödinger's cat paradox in their watery context. I also love the Scots word 'plouter'. It's what I do. It's what most of us do. 

I haven't quite managed to write a poem about collapsing wave functions, but some day I might.

The physics of fishing
(Fife Ness, 1998)

An eider arrows over the waves.
In the depths below the bobbing floats
Heisenberg’s lobsters may, or may not,
lurk in each weighted pot.

The uncertainty is resolved
when Schrödinger gaffs
the suspended line, reels in,
and curses every stolen bait
and empty creel,
in the manner of all Fife fishermen,
then plouters home through the swell
to poison his cat.


Colin Will


Copyright © Colin Will, 1998, 2011

The early morning poem

I'm an early riser, always have been. When I was working I lived at some distance from Edinburgh, so I had to drive from Mid Calder to King's Buildings or later The Botanics. After we moved to Dunbar I joined the ranks of rail commuters, shivering on the platform at Dunbar Station to wait for the 7.40 am train.

I didn't mind getting up at 6:15; the house was quiet, and I had my routine, a shower, coffee, making up my sandwiches for lunch, then leaving home, usually before the family woke up. From autumn to spring it meant I left and returned in darkness. And I found that I got up early even at weekends. Since retirement in 2002 I still get up early, maybe around 7am. It has its compensations though, seeing dawns, hearing birdsong and the sounds of towns waking up. Here's a poem from those working days - I wrote it in 1993, and it was published in my first collection, Thirteen Ways of Looking At the Highlands (Diehard, 1996):

Opening gambit


Dawn's the finest time there is.
I can't fault it; clear or clouded,
it's somehow always novel,
watching skies open towards a sunrise
behind the hills, or pinkening
the city's castle- and spire-lines.
Heaven knows I've seen enough of them,
but there's always the hope
of life becoming brighter
in the hour of the world's lightening.

Copyright  © Colin Will 1996, 2015

The gym poem

I've mentioned before, probably several times, that I go to a gym regularly. The habit started probably some time in the 1980s, when I was working as Librarian at the British Geological Survey, then based on the University of Edinburgh's science campus. There was a gym there, we were entitled to use it, and I did, often in lieu of lunch.

When I moved to the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh in 1988 I missed it, but for a time I was allowed to use the University's facilities at The Pleasance. Then the rules changed, and I couldn't use it, so I sometimes went to a private gym, but most often I used the gym at the Commonwealth Pool. Then I got too busy, and didn't go regularly, until after we moved to Dunbar in 2000. There's a gym here, in the Leisure Pool building, and after I retired in 2002 I was eligible for reduced rates. For a very small monthly payment, I have unlimited off-peak access to the gym, the health suite and the pool. I try to go three times a week, and I'm convinced of the health benefits. But it's also a social thing. I have friends who go there regularly, and we find the time to chat between struggling with the treadmill, the cross-trainer, the resistance machines and the dumb-bells.

So it maybe won't come as a surprise that from time to time I'm challenged to write a poem about the gym, and once or twice, I have. This one was first published in the New Voices Press anthology, Working Words (2008), and is included in my 2012 collection, The propriety of weeding, available from Red Squirrel Press.

Working Mothers

Monday morning, kids crêched,
time to hit the gym
for a weekly workout.

Time to catch
the latest chat,
as you run for dear life

facing the mirror
of yesterday’s extra helping,
seeing tomorrow’s toned

and youthful body;
squeezing out the weekend’s toxins,
working up a sweat,

a schedule to tuck and tighten,
to firm and reform your figure,
recover your before-baby body.

Row, run, step, push,
the cycle of exercise freewheels
to the sounds of rap and chatter.

Meanwhile, in the corner,
a puffing Gran tries to reset
her own odometer

to ten years back,
hoping for twenty more,
betrayed by connective tissue

which snaps when it used
to stretch, by ballooning veins
and the hourglass streaming faster.



Copyright © Colin Will 2008, 2012

The geological poem

I'm calling it that, but in reality I've written quite a few poems which feature geology and the other earth sciences. I did Open University courses in Geology, Geochemistry and Geophysics back in the day, and I worked as Librarian in the British Geological Survey for fifteen years.

This one's also a local poem, set in the Bathgate Hills. I moved to Bathgate as a teenager in 1957 or 8. Much later Jane and I first set up home together in Bathgate, and our two sons were born there, so I know the Hills very well. Geologically, much of it's a volcanic atoll with a fringing coral reef, Carboniferous in age. There are a fair number of volcanic dykes, and a couple of them are associated with lead ore deposits. Near Knock Hill, the Silver mines were discovered in 1605 by a Linlithgow collier named Sandy Maund, and mined out by 1613. It's a high-temperature orefield, with silver, lead, zinc, barytes, nickel and arsenic minerals found in a feeder dyke - possibly an old 'black smoker' hydrothermal deposit. I explored the mine in my younger days, and researched the history too, finding shafts called God's Blessing and The White Hole. So that's where this poem comes from. It was published in my first collection - Thirteen Ways of Looking At the Highlands (Diehard, 1996).

Mining silver


“God's Blessing” ran out too soon.

Where the Silver Bourn flows below Cairnpapple’s kist,
Sandy Maund’s ‘wondrous ore’ shone like metal hair,
till Saxon miners clipped it all away
in seven short years.

At Windywa’s the minister’s flock diminished
and he migrated, his line returning as Lord Beaverbrook.
Inside Aitken’s mine the timbers can be squeezed like sponge;
a fat toad squats in an alcove, in the dark,
and round the entrance there are burning nettles.
On the spoil heaps dead hens advertised
nickel, arsenic, and cobalt too - the Devil’s metal -
for blessings are seldom wholly Divine.

The dark and stinking muds in tropical lagoons
at Pumpherston, Uphall, Winchburgh,
transformed to coked and calcined oil-shales; voids
to swallow schools (the price of cheap land),
and hideaway shooting galleries
for the Linhouse Water sniffers.

At Knock you’re on a wrecked reef,
a fossil black smoker, plundered for profit, like the rest.
From the atoll’s stump view
Ochil and Pentland scarps, below, between,
remember coal swamps as you breathe
Polkemmet’s brimstone.

West Lothian’s an extractor’s Paradise;
new holes are easily punched in the Central Belt,
and the folk are so well used to their waste lines that
the Westwood bing’s preserved, for Heaven’s sake.

By the ‘Blessing’ shaft yellow iris flags waggle
in the summer breeze, and there’s always
a lark nearby, with his silver flute.
The grasses ripple by like waves of hair,
or fronds in a coral sea.


Copyright © Colin Will 1996, 2015

The holiday poem

Whenever I go somewhere different, like Abroad, I make notes, keep a journal, but I also try to write poems, maybe a first draft. Then I come home and polish them. Back in 1996 we decided to take a gite in the South of France for our annual holiday, which was usually in July. We picked the property from a Gites de France catalogue, and booked it without knowing the region. Getting there was interesting. We drove down to the Channel Tunnel, then on to the Autoroute and down to the Languedoc. We did it in a single journey, without stopping, which was a bit crazy, but we were younger then, and we took turns driving.

We arrived in a small town called Paraza, not too far from Beziers, and on the bank of the Canal du Midi. It was very hot, and we were exhausted. The property was tiny, and on three floors, without air-conditioning. The toilet and bathroom were down a flight of extremely steep stairs in the basement, bedroom and kitchen on the ground floor, and the lounge upstairs. Half of the roof had been cut away to form a terrasse, which was pleasant in the evenings, but unbearably hot during the day. But it had THAT view over the Canal, which was beautiful. We explored the region, visiting Carcassonne and the Cathar strongholds. I started to learn about the history of the area, and had the first glimmerings of an idea for a novel (of which more later). 

I loved the place. The poem was published in Seven Senses (Diehard, 2000).

Out in the Midi sun

This is the place where fruit truly ripens.
In the shop I buy that dawn’s crop
of what we thought were pale boulders in the field.
The melon’s hard rind’s concentrically cracked
around the stalk’s remnants.
Revealed, the luscious perfumed flesh,
holding the night’s coolness,
has the tang of toffee.

A thousand and more miles from the cool crags
and liquid hillslopes of my grey home
I shade my eyes from a hot heaven sun.

Haze lifts off the heated ground
and builds to clouds
whose tops boil and billow
then float off on a sea-sucked breeze,
pulling in more Med moisture
until two cloud-heads merge
in a kiss of wispy fists.

I’ve half a month of Midi memories;
of rusted ochre gorges;
the dust-green of spiny bushes;
limestone pinnacles, fortressed
against the Inquisition’s prying armies;
of beaches where breasts are pointedly
not noticed;
where colours are all colours
and all shadows are black;
where a roadkill snake,
out from its orchard,
paid the price
for crossing back to Eden.

Bee-eaters buzz the plane-trees
in iridescent bomb-bursts,
and drowning cicadas somersault,
trying to fly through water.
Vineyards work harder in the heat,
transforming light into sweetness,
water into soft wine to warm
the awesome black and starry nights to come.

Copyright © Colin Will 2000