| |
Lament
So you are going away
damn you
and me to stay
to face
November and December
all alone
north wind blowing
rough sea flowing through
green days of grace
the sheltered place
bless you
we spent in lovely sin.
Source
From Caravanserai (Edinburgh: Chanticleer,
2005). Reprinted by permission of the author.
Author's note
'Lament' is one of a pair of poems – the other is 'Riddle' – which were written when I was reading a lot of early Irish literature. Human emotions are rarely unmixed or unambiguous and I have tried to let my poems reflect something of that complexity of feeling. The great attraction for me of literature from tribal societies – Homeric Greece, pre-conquest Ireland – is its directness and urgency of expression and – very often – its linguistic virtuosity.
Editor's comment
The simplicity of a diary entry or an inscription on a wall, almost pre-aged with its slightly old-fashioned register, but with a heart-felt, lean and prosodic balance; it begins as if it might be a curse but ends in fond memory.
Biography
Walter Perrie was born in 1949 in the village of Quarter, Lanarkshire. Educated at Hamilton Academy and at the Universities of Edinburgh and Stirling, he is the author of several volumes of poetry, of which the most recent are Decagon: Selected Poems 1995-2005, selected and introduced by John Herdman, and Caravanserai, from which 'Lament' is taken. He has also written a book about his travels in eastern Europe, Roads that Move, and has edited several literary magazines, including Chapman, Lines Review, and, most recently, Fras. He has been Writer in Residence at the Universities of Stirling and British Columbia and teaches philosophy and creative writing for Perth College.
Related
links
|
