your limiting place

I know I've blipped from this, relatively rare (only a couple of thousand copies published), pictured 1981 collection before ...

... it does though contain a wonderful amalgamation of poems, 'interview-snippets' (with the various poets), and numerous paintings and drawings by Alexander (Sandy) Moffat.

Here's an Iain Crichton Smith verse from within:


Islander

Ash on an old man's sleeve ---
you sit in your bare kitchen
brow furrowed at your table
and the words of your muttered grace
are quite unintelligible,
you in this humble corner
not affording God's roses
but thorns only and cabbages:
while through the window I see
the alien oil-rig planted
deep in this friendly water.

Like poetry its pipes bring up
the oil from the sea's depths:
it travels from hope to hope.

But you sit gravely here
having travelled America,
fixed in your limiting place,
in your blue dungarees,
staring down at your garden,
its turnips and cabbages,
the winding roots of potatoes,
clutching known darknesses,

and your shifting canvas jacket
sailing the local air.

---

Iain Crichton Smith (1928 - 1998)

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