Stuart B. Campbell

Regularly published in journals and anthologies. Short-listed for the Poetry Society/ BT e-Poet Laureate Award, 2000. Publications: 'Robie Gow's Prison' (1996); Edited the anthology 'Things Not Seen' (1999). New collection Navigation For Innocents published May 2002 by Dionysia Press (Edinburgh). ISBN: 1 903171-07-5 98 pages £5.50 To order a copy e-mail: stuart.campbell1@virgin.net or contact the publishers (20A Montgomery Street Edinburgh EH7 5JS). See LLS Database of Writers www.scottishbooktrust.com for other details.

MY MESSIAH OF THE SKERRIES

An eartly nourris sits and sings,
            'The Most High will overshadow you...
Little ken I my bairnie's faither;
            I am the handmaid of the Lord.'

Then ane arose at her bed-fit, saying,
            'You have found favour with God
Here am I your bairnie's faither:
            With God nothing is impossible:

I am a man, upo the lan;
            No one knows who the son is except the father;
My hame is in Sule Skerrie,
            I will come again and take you to myself.'

'It was na weel' quo the maiden fair,
            'How shall this be, since I have no husband:
That the Great Silkie of Sule Skerrie
            Has shown strength with his arm'

Now he has taen a purse of goud:
            'Woman, behold your son;
Gae unto me my ane wee son.
            My beloved son; with thee I am well pleased.

An it sall come to pass on a simmer's day,
            (darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour)
That I will tak my little young son:
            'Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit'

An thu sall marry a proud gunner;
            'What you are going to do, do quickly'
An wie the very first schot that ere he schoots:
            'Eli, Eli, láma sabach-thá-ni? Father forgive them.'

Return to top

CISTE

Of sun-dried bog silt,
a fire had burned upon
a slab of hornfelsed sediment.

Smoke-stained and sweet, the wooden box
-chimney; drooping among the roof-trees:
quarter-hewn to a slow writhe, then rigour.

Walls; rendered with the remains of a harvest
(the bread eaten or whiskey drunk)
and the clippings and brushings

of a horse, long since taken from
the plough-harness; and traces
of a slow air (or perhaps a pibroch),

caught amongst the cobwebs, and
of dance steps; drifting mica under the skylight.

Return to top

CEILIDH AT THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON

(Written after visiting Rosslyn Chapel, Midlothian)

Homeless, the band
of Egyptian troubadours strikes up
-wards, rising high on
pillars; playing
to an audience
of gargoyles and green
-men amongst the gormless
angels: fully fledged,
seraphim; all in adoration, save
the falling one, bound (head
-first) to hell in cords.

Here's an invitation:
     "Take your partner for the dance
            macabre"

The fiddler leads off a pavane,
      playing largo and lazy:
            'The abbot and his wife
                  bid fareweel to paradise'

One of the penny-whistle players takes it
      into a galliard, an after thought for a dance:
            'The mason's apron
                  splattered with blood'

Then the piper, alternating three-four and six
      -eight measures (for good measure):
            'The bishop worships the
                  looking-glass'

The rhythm-section: gittern, citteren, mandolin,
      keep it all strung together; reels, jigs, quadrills:
            'Captain Wedderburn's wooing of
                  the Earl of Rosslyn's daughter'
            'Our Johnny's breeches burst again
                  (The hoose is scarce o tatties)'
            'The hoary Knight glowers at
                  his pretty red-haired page'

At one point, someone, perhaps the fife-and-drum
      show-off, gets 'Avarice' confused with 'Charity'
            but nobody notices; the dance goes on

                        and on
                                                and

all that there is
here, is human;
fertile and flawed.

So, we dance
the dance and sing the song
of songs, with our
multifarious melody,
      stuttering rhythms,
            incoherent harmonies.
Amongst birlin miracles
and raucous revelations,
themes repeat, reverberate:
      the Sulamite maid;
            the shepherd loon;
                  the fause knicht.

Calling for a Circassian Circle,
a king (blind-mad or
reckless) to take a sword
to split our infant
-ile constructions:

      "It's a house and monument
      of idolatrie, and not ane place
      for teiching the word",

Ranting John has received wisdom,

      "Hae it haille demolishit"

It remains
our inherited habitation, where
      we cannot separate the dragon
      and the ash
      tree, from the fruit
      and the fall;
      the searching eagles
      and hoodie craws, from
      the olive-bearing dove;
congregating
in the ceilidh,
we can reclaim all the dances.

Return to top

BOOKMARK

(the assignation of Deer Abbey)

He had tried to banish all
such treachery from his heart,
like metaphors:
strong as an oak,
when it seemed the Dove
had departed for good,
perhaps; he sat by the river
in the glade and wept,
bent like a willow, by nature;
his spirit sapped.

Bede understood many things,
as a mormaer: like a man
losing friends, bird-song, babbling
burns, green buds on branches; but
when he came down
from mòr-mhonadh to meet,
this man Drostan showed
him a book; illustrated
his point: drew attention to men
with wings and circles
round their heads; stabbed
his forefinger first into one hand,
then the other; spread out his
arms, the way an eagle does
before it folds them and plummets
earthward.

"Brother."
Bede knew the man
did not understand his words
yet, he cried
out "Brother", showing him:
his back, his arms, his chest;
took his finger and traced
each coloured circle and
eternal ring; the serpent
eating itself; sustaining gannets
angled towards fish.

After they had walked
together through the wood
of the rowan and the ash tree,
the wood of the stones:
carved with the crescent moon
and the monster; the snake and
the chalice; the three circles
contained in one, they arrived
at an agreement concerning
land (and creatures, physical
and metaphysical; everything
else was marginal): written
on the narrow strip on the leaves
of the leather bound book, then
signed by the man, Drostan;
content to stay at the place
of the tears, planting acorns.

Return to top

MACPHERSON'S LEGACY

They will claim time has moved on;
but, Braco's coaches, burker-black,
will proceed, hearse-quiet, over
Banff bridge, crossing the Danube;
even tonight, the noddies are out
searching for refugee stragglers.

How old is this ranting:

"Oh aye, this time: we'll be the anes
tae brak ribs, smash faces, jirk necks
an birse backs; there'll be nae mair gypsy
daunces (forby at the end o a rope)
an fiddlin about afore they're strung
-up an layered deep amang the birks."

Older than MacPherson's fareweel;
Ceausescu beats the big drum;
has learned to call the tunes,
knows all the words and all
the versions there's ever been;
transposes half-truths into history:

"It was by a woman's
treacherous hand"

Gypsy MacPherson, travelling
MacaTuttie; all dispossessed
can name their own shan dodders.
We flatties, the gallows crowd,
gather round the tollbooth or TV;
turn our backs to Bucharest
and do not cross the Deveron
until it's too late to matter.

Tomorrow we will listen
to some other lament
-able vendetta,
but all we'll remember
is a broken fiddle.

burker(s) / noddies / shan dodders : travelling people's names for body snatchers
flatties: are what traveling people call the rest of us

Return to top

FIRST WORD

(Instructions to the Calligraphist)

This:
my first word; let it be
garnished, illuminating; the first
letter shall be an evergreen
tree, with a conspiracy
of chimpanzees in the branches;
an enquiry of squirrels.

That stem should rise
reminiscent of a redwood:
plant it solid; bury the roots,
let them down labyrinthian
-deep to siphon all; bile
and honeysuckle essence.

Scroll the top stroke: bold
as a banner unfurled, a canopy:
copy the Caledonian pine,
how it shelters, so it seems
as if the white stag
is musking the bark beneath.

I must be
...there,
not quite centred;
as a gaberlunzie
king is; past yet
in the passing, noticed
...enough.

Let it end, perhaps, with a whisper
-ing suggestion of a kelpie, cleaving
the surface of a loch; its tail still
tangled in these roots above.

On this I shall hang
everything; all
hope (a small candle
-light pool?) beginning
here.

Return to top

HENGE – CLASHINDARROCH

The shape of omega;
no wider than two
men lying
head to head or

toes touching, this
negative impression
raises certain evidence:
the spoor of a horse

from Hades, gigantic
in hoof and harness
-ing the power to pull
the wicker-walled

chariot all the way,
from Tap o' Noth
to the Fords of A'an;
perhaps not

in our time; but, here
where the stone sparked,
where the ozone burns
still; at the centre

of all that remains
we draw a blank; yet
try to trace
our faint beginnings.

Return to top