No Ruined Stone, and: Holyrood Hunting Grounds, and: Springbank, Great House, and: Legend

No Ruined Stone

        after Calum Colvin,        to Robert Burns

You saturate the sightof those who come after, poetsand painters alike. Your words invademy mind's listening, manaclemy tongue when I try to speakon all I backward cast my eyeand fear and canna see.Who would I have beento you, what stonein the ruined house of the past?In this world, I am unloosed, belongingto no country, no tribe, no clan.Not African. Not Scotland.And you, voice that stalksmy waking and dreaming,you more myth than man,cannot unmake history.So why am I hereresurrecting you to speakwhen your silence gulfs centuries?Why do I find myselfon your doorstep, knocking,when I know the deadwill never answer?

Holyrood Hunting Grounds

          Edinburgh, 1838

Spring again and the hills              are filled with gorse.Each day, I walk              from the city, leavebehind its cobblestones,              the closes' stink,everywhere grey              of brick on brick, to take inthis yellow flowering,              like the poui of childhoodunbridled.              Here, the past siltsthe present, salts air.              No more a girlI turn from all              my given namesto know what land knows:              how forged in firehills are birthed,              how loch and sea convergeinside the eye's trickery.              No more a girlI stand in this place              not earthed for me.

Springbank, Great House

          Port Antionio, 1796

Place of memory now in ruin.This point overlooking the sea,this cliff, this perch, paradiseto none but one who cameimagining he could be laird, could beunmoored from class and caste.The way past is always the waythrough. Overland, we traversedBlue Mountain, rocky passagesflanking us, abutted by gullies,oversized plants casting their shadows.The horses' hooves trod and troduntil stone gave way to field,and we entered the Rio Grande Valley,approaching the house from behind—first sight rising still in my mind,bodying forth its false promise.Leuk twice or ye leap ance echoesnow, late and fruitless. O, what foolishnesslies in the heart of man, gleamingwish to be more that waitsfor its chance to pounce and savage.

Legend

            Edinburgh, 1836

Everywhere I turn, you ghost in this city:in snatches of drawing room conversation,in the single book you left behind,in poems and songs you pennedfrom your so-called exile, sent backto dear Scotia, the ones I hear spillingfrom every corridor, as I huntfor scraps of the man you must have been,not the legend you have become.But if not in body or story, where is the soulto be found? How can it dwell?Walking cobbled streets, I find myselflistening in echoes of my footfallsfor yours that never fell on these stones.Days, I scour rescued letters, journals, eachstored scribble of your thought—eachtime chiding myself for asking wordsto deliver you, restore and return youwhole. No. Truth be told, not whole,nor just any part but, rather, the abscessof you, the absence in me that gapes.