Clearances - Poem

Clearances

   The clouds go over
   singly, or in fleets, trailing
   raggedly back, against a sky
   where looming vaults of rain
   come over too. Then the sky lets loose:
   the shades of grey become uncountable,
   the rain comes down on everything, diagonal, banks:
   the windows, roof, the wooden deck,
   the trees around, the green slopes run
   with mud, the fields below are soaked and fill;
   the road becomes a grey and moving river.

   The baby hasn't heard this sound before: the heavy rain
   on the iron roof, and cries himself
   to sleep, at last, as the downpour
   eases off. It must be time to leave.
   The weather is an actual farewell.

   I used to think the old Gaels of Ireland,
   or the west of Scotland, knew
   so little of our modern world.
   It seemed they were a pastoral people
   and burdened with a culture of conservatism.
   But clearances are always strong in the mind,
   the images recurrent, the rubble of the ruined homes,
   the ghosts of children, animals, and men
   and women helpless in the face of the event.

   Farewells and birth, there are some things
   no clues or forms of knowledge alter
   in themselves. I won't say they can't help.
   They knew about departure, those old people,
   and the kinds of life we deal with here
   require that inherited wisdom. Now
   the heavy showers have passed, but different shades of grey
   reflect, refract unnumbered tones of light.
   It's time to pack what we have and can carry.
   It's time to take what we can, and go. The boy
   will not remember this, the landscape
   of his parents, unless we do.

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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