Kilmartin Glen - Poem

Kilmartin Glen

   I never saw the intricate connections
   with quite this sunny clarity before,
   such intimate revealing of relations
   in brilliance, and at such an hour:
   the West and Islands open to the sea
   and Ireland, always seemed to be
   alive with colour: bright blue waters,
   emeralds and snow; but shapes and movement,
   glacial striations, ox-bow lakes, tidal rivers,
   hill-tops making patterns to each other--
   all connect in vision as the art of men
   and women finds its laws in natural
   reciprocation; raindrops in a quiet pool
   form expanding spirals on the bending plane:
   an ancient brooch, the lanulae--
   silver, gold: water, sunlight, eyes
   to see the clearness of design. And this
   takes place in mind, imagination:
   across 10,000 years, while now
   outside the car my father drives, the rain
   drives down on grass and bracken, heather
   rocks and hills and lochs and lochans,
   midges and elusive little fish. The forestry
   have camouflaged the earth's wet dark
   antiquity; the road between Kilmartin
   and the ferry just approaching Oban is
   impatient, twisty, a hard fast exit through
   this valley of old ghosts. And yet the vision stays
   perception, the clarity of sunlight's
   careful disposition, in
   this undifferentiated time.

Alan Riach, formerly Associate Professor of English and Pro-Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Waikato, New Zealand, is now Head of the Department of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow. Riach's books include Clearances, First & Last Songs, Open Return, This Folding Map, and a critical study, & Hugh MacDiarmid Epic Poetry. Riach is also the series editor of the collected works of Hugh MacDiarmid, published by Carcanet Press.

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