Remember

Hooray! - it's National Poetry Day tomorrow (Thursday, 2nd October) - lots of background information is available via here ...

... and the theme for 2014 is 'Remember'; and I'm reminded (sorry!) of this Norman MacCaig classic, taken from the wonderful, near 900-page, pictured collection (published in 2011):


Crossing the Border

I sit with my back to the engine, watching
the landscape pouring away out of my eyes.
I think I know where I'm going and have
some choice in the matter.

I think, too, that this was a country
of bog-trotters, moss-troopers,
fired ricks and roof-trees in the black night — glinting
on tossed horns and red blades.
I think of lives
bubbling into the harsh grass.

What difference now?
I sit with my back to the future, watching
time pouring away into the past. I sit, being helplessly
lugged backwards
through the Debatable Lands of history, listening
to the execrations, the scattered cries, the
falling of roof-trees
in the lamentable dark.

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Norman MacCaig (1910-1996)

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