If Norman MacCaig is my Landscape, poetic-distillation (thanks
) poet of choice, then Edwin Morgan is the poet I seek out for love poems and poems that explore the human condition and our often cracked facades. I find this poem, the first in his Glasgow Sonnets series to be incredibly evocative. In 14 lines he manages to paint a picture that weaves countless tales. He is writing of a time before I was born and of a city on the opposite side of Scotland, but tenement life and the city slums of Scotland lie in our very recent past and the echoes of the lives started (and ended) there are very much part of our story today. We’re lucky to have living history museums across Scotland that tip their hat to this time and others, and I highly recommend checking them out - I’m thinking the People's Palace in Glasgow, New Lanark or the Verdant Works.Grab a copy of Edwin Morgan - Centenary Selected Poems here.
Glasgow Sonnets I
A mean wind wanders through the backcourt trash.
Hackles on puddles rise, old mattresses
puff briefly and subside. Play-fortresses
of brick and bric-a-brac spill out some ash.
Four storeys have no windows left to smash,
but in the fifth a chipped sill buttresses
mother and daughter the last mistresses
of that black block condemned to stand, not crash.
Around them the cracks deepen, the rats crawl.
The kettle whimpers on a crazy hob.
Roses of mould grow from ceiling to wall.
The man lies late since he has lost his job,
smokes on one elbow, letting his coughs fall
thinly into an air too poor to rob.
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