HIGHLANDER'S LAMENT

Over the whispering chant of a boiling burn,
rowan’s red fruit ringed the frost-nipped dell,
under mild moss,
  and winter-sky-grey stone,
     the acid-bogs cling to the bones and souls,
of vanished Picts and Scots,
   and the latter Viking storm

the contorted remnant dwarf,
 of the ancient Caledonia wood,
   is the crippled and gnarled bodice,
     of a Scots Pine,
wind weary, 
   roots in  warped Celtic knots, 
       like toes welded now,
         into a  frost-splintered crevice,
           of  the glacier-ground crag,

a startled sunbeam struck out,
   over a heather-bell purple  haze,
      of a soggy snow-patched fell.
casting a shadow from the rocky cairn
blae'berries autumn bloom splattered,
  as the clansman's blood,
    nourishing  the  fierce heath,
      setting fire to the bleak unrepentant  moor,
         under the hardened glass-gaze,
          of the raven's black eye

clearances in imperial feudal waves,
purged  the glens, 
       the isles,
            and the dales,
scattered to the 4 winds ,
  splattered to the  4 corners ,
   of the New World the Highland men,
     leaving only peat, poverty,
   tenuous crofts and bleating sheep
to bring yet again,
subjugation from another land…
  then forgotten grimy mills,
   by the rusty banks of the Clyde,
and now acid rain in steely clouds 
from the Dragon and St George,
  and their refugee camps'
    of the new Lowland towns

Rhuari Hannan October 95 / June 99