After Dunbar

I'm reprinting below a poem I wrote some years ago, published (and still available) in my 2010 collection: The floorshow at the Mad Yak Café (Red Squirrel Press).

I've always been very fond of Dunbar's poetry. To me he's the most accessible of the post-Chaucerian Scottish Makars. The range of subjects he covered is very wide, and I find him very readable. Some of his relatives held lands at Biel, near Dunbar, and it's been suggested that he took a surname from the place he came from - William of Dunbar.

The poem which follows came after reading one of Dunbar's most famous poems. It's important to say that this is not a 'translation' from Dunbar's Scots into modern English, nor is it a 'version' of the the original poem - it's very different, and goes off in different directions. It reflects on Dunbar's times - what you could and could not do in winter - but it also contains my own feelings and experiences, as an original poem should.

It's appropriate to the time of year, so here it is:

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, 2010