At the Loch of the Pass of the Swans

By Norman MacCaig

I dangle my feet in the cool loch water.

A thousand journeys, a century of miles

crinkle to the crimson flower beside me.

Where is the mist that wrapped itself round

the threshing machine last autumn?

Where’s the blackface lamb I pulled from a peat bog?

Where are the places my father knew

and the storm waves roaring in the caves of Scarp,

Frightening my little girl mother?

Escape from my history - to the campfires

of Huns and Goths, to the monks picking

hazel nuts and berries on sunny lona.

I play with time and distance,

a game less cruel than the one

they play with me, the one they will win.

Let them. For this moment they‘ve shrunk

to the crimson flower beside me

and two feet, corpse-white, in the smiling water.