Millennial Canto 7 Poem by Sally Evans

7 (i)
Towards a country of purple ground,
rough, wilder woodland, mossy, mauve
and hung about with words, I found
a wandering lifetime's treasure trove,
flooded by sense of the profound
limitless woodland, sunwise-bound
by cliff and rugged rock surround,
sharp pinnacles collapsed to cloud
a double landscape carpet sown
earth, heather, mist or grass alone,
a prisoner on a drifting floe,
a ransomed runaway, I would go,
did, went there, casting off behind
strange half-seen visions called to mind,
scattered remnants I cannot own
locked in the past, and walked upon.
For when in this discovered land
of orange mountainside, scarred sand,
a pageant with a foreign cast
I watched meandering crowds go past,
a conquering craving told me, Stay,
merge hope, need, memory in this land
and blow the residue away

7 (ii)
In a croft in the Sma' Glen
an old lady took up a pen.
The croft is now a layer of rubble
but the old lady was living then.
Now may the white burn play and bubble
and roll fresh over old trouble.
The old lady she was a Gael
her pen whittled from a cuckoo quill
the Gaelic she spoke she could not spell
si in Scots words she strove to tell
of the long trek beyond Amulree
far from the primrose kitchen yard
from the brown hares and the blue kail.
The old lady her dress and mind
narrowed through long seasons of use
to immediate practicality
allows no abstract, aught to deduce
from the black crepe and the hard rule
stocking and sentiment, wool and wool.
Flash squirrel in treeward flight,
red when the hares are turning white,
flowers spring, , and the old bard
dies down yearly and takes it hard.
Places she has never been
lurk lost behind the beautiful screen
within which she has spent her years.
Cold seasons have killed her tears
for parents and brothers, tales or woe.
Bleak were the winters long ago.
The old lady has drunk her fill.
She drops her men and the paper fades
and the pictures flicker among the shades,
Paris ghetto or Scottish hill,
palace or parlour or typing pool.
The world is empty, the earth is full.