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stb01= "banff links
in their high banks the pebbles turn their blunt teeth on themselves and grind the violence out of broken glass the mans hand out of brick death out of bones.
the wind grinds me gnawing nibbling hollowing a vast seabird that swoops and scoops till i am aware only of my slit eyes as slashed as fissures in gnarled rock concealing in their damp dark who knows what. these slits of eyes, and a warm ache spreading from my centre:
a ghost fire for a nameless hunger like that for uncertain love its swollen tides bellying and swelling semenflecked or life cast about and confused without defeat or victory or chance unchecked or the earth turning with its wearied burning heart towards its reconciliation with the greater dark. ";
stb02= "bridge of alvah
hours away from its sunset estuary the foamy sky froths fast and turbulent through narrows between thick towering trees that spike the wind with twig- spines and half-bursting buds; that sway their long lengths and creak like quaking crags to the great groaning roots that grip the rock like spiders prey about the single span of stone [as suspended, short and startling as life] that carries us above the steeps of crumbling under- growth and sleek carved slabs that slide sheer and steelsharp to side the sudden bend of the river urging seawards, peat- dark and unmirroring in the shadowed shaft where in a dingy two men sit, one sculling as the other stares down through glass into the running deep, sees down beyond the shining salmon to the inverted arch of stone and sand and pebble that has spanned this gap since river was, that still bears the weight of water across the rushing sky ";
stb03= "Conversation with a great aunt
here is where the old tide ebbs and spreads the wrinkled rocks and sand it lived through and absorbed out behind it, marking each eddy, each pool it left a little of itself in, the thunderous cliffs it fronted and the slow grind of pebbles .. to teach the new tide? no. an unwinding of memories, before it's shrouded in the unflecked mass of sea, a setting free of all it gathered the flotsam gifts of passing lives are wedged around her in the net-loft's narrow cave.";
stb04= "Crovie
she is hanging her washing on the wires beside the wall
the wall does not go up but down to squat upon the rocks
the wind comes ranting down the firth a gabble of nonsense, of warning and words snatched from shouting fishermen
will the clothes freeze before they blow dry? before the rain comes? ";
stb05= "Gamrie
the wind whips through the unjointed sockets of the dykes cattle gnaw the skull-shaped neeps where danes fell in the bloody mires
one rook stabbing in brown furrows gulps the quick and dead alike between the broken whinstanes on bent earth's bare windknit brow ";
stb06= "Gardenstown
the sky is hard and unforgiving the herded churches cower beneath the crag touting thirty different paths to heaven with signs that wheedle, shout and nag.
some sense of earthly prison has gripped here, of being crushed beneath eternity: only one narrow road leads up and out, all others stumble to the sea ";
stb07= "Macduff
It is getting towards evening and the drying nets strung from worn posts sag like abandoned cobwebs, flaccid, torn; the clouded sky and sea sweep together drawing the speckled dark behind them and the flickering light dies in one heave
leaving us uncertainly amazed to still be here on this pavement by the bedrock after this great net has drifted overhead
and passed, snaring a greater catch than us.
Far to sea the low stars of the ships tilt and wheel and other wide-eyed travelers wander the swift paths of their lives beneath the heaving chug of these barnacle-bellied sea-spiders, as haunted as ourselves by half-awareness of the hunting net ";
stb08= "Macduff harbour
in the harbour bar the fishingmen curse the weather and winding-gear
leaving through the narrows of the half-door the big man says - it's turned to cold - and - this door's an awful stupid size ";
stb09= "Pennan
The long-necked jet wheels across the braeheads for an eleventh time: a frustrated vulture circling the spoor of some invisible victim, some future corpse.
I paid the government all this year and the last, I feel that bought one of these two minutes of head-splitting scream and vanished vapour.
How I wish I'd seen, how I wish my money had been spent on a whirring wobbling helicopter from which life lets down rope-ladders
not on this idol of the carrion birds, screeching over two tiny villages, flaunting its metallic arrogance to the wrecking cliffs, to the widowing sea. ";
stb10= "Railway Inn
The railway's gone that used to bring me here years without fail pushed one way, pulled the other, along the single line from Tillynaught:
between the steep brae and the rusting green gasholder boys race motorbikes across the scuffed scrub where the station stood. and only boats of shallow draught
lie in the harbour between the banks of silt. from the north seas the weather's closing in, clouds thick as stonewalls, rain thin as my thoughts:
another glen grant and an o.v.d. with ginger, please, Sandy. ";
stb11= "Strichen
Mormond Hill's a shadow; beneath the bridge the Ugie water's carried all my childhood twigs away.
this stocky figure casting in mid-stream, pipe gripped in teeth, is caught himself, hooked by memory.
deaths, losses, clouds, define our landscape; shade sharpens detail and with the passing light
we are exiled to the present, where everything holds its place in nervous balance at the wavering
tip of our lives. this grief is a dismal rage. but against what? nothing. no-one. what cannot be replaced
is mostly ourselves. but to live is to carry the past forward, downstream: and my hands are stained
by blood sweetness; i sit hidden by the sunlit berry canes; and from the dominie's house, the rutted lane,
half-heard and not understood, drift voices that do not seek me, that i do not look to find. ";
stb12= "Tillynaught
";
stb13= "Troup Head
the sheep lay with her four legs to the sky becoming a treestump, uprooted or storm-brought; the rot and unsettling loss of shape made petrified and brittle by the arctic wind, her fleece floating round her, aimless as scum, flotsam ignored or of a nauseous interest.
half a mile away the two men mend a fence on the hill's ridged horizon near the unseen sea: from here on the road's shore they could be at the seas rim: the cropped grass, choppy, foam-flecked with sheep, heaves up and down towards us and our shouts and waving drown futile against the wind ";
stb14= "Wars
On Banff, for instance, two bombs fell. both missed the town, one dropped far down the links, on the distillery, and released from bondage to the quick brown Boyndie burn a flood of raw spirit, that I'm told roaring fools took in daft drams, near-dying of its liquid fire.
The other, falling on Duff House in its open grounds, killed several of its inmates: all german prisoners.
The rest seems familiar to this coast, to the struggle without a peace: shortages, men lost at sea, others gone abroad, into silence. This episode marked out as important history only by abandoned pillboxes, watchtowers, and a thankfully shorter list carved on another wall of the granite memory. ";
stb15= "Well hidden
This is where I was when searching voices were calling me. I was in places where time had no meaning; among tangled tall grass within the rough walls of the roofless ropewalks that stretched to the braehead, watching huge snails wander through broken pantiles under a sky aching with distance and the seagull's cry: am I there? or am I in the shed whose windows are dark with dust, whose warped benches and clay pots are coated with dust, that smells of this dust of dry earth and the wood's slow rot, of the green skin on the rainbarrel and oil in a rusting can, where everything has been holding its breath for a long time and vaguely stirs as I potter round and goes back to its secret dreaming when I leave. For I am not there. I am upstairs in a room squeezed into the slope of the roof, a room whose door is disguised as a cupboard, whose walls are pasted with newspapers as old as my great-aunt, only slightly yellowed where the weak light falls across the clutter of long-locked trunks and suitcases stuffed with mothballed clothes. and there I am sitting while the rain patters on the grimy skylight reading of ferocious battles, sunk fishingboats and farm shows, but do not think you can reach me there, for they are all in the past, in my mind only, and when I hide in them now, no-one can find me. ";
stb16= "18 June 1815
At 3 that afternoon, by the hedged lane above Hougemont Farm, Sergeant William Fraser of the 92nd Regiment, Gordon Highlanders, at 22 a veteran of five years war in Spain, was gored in his side by a French bayonet: '.. he stuffed his sark into the wound and fought on..' At 4 o'clock he stood at the corner of a square swaying unsteadily: Wellington, riding by, told him to stand still. Then the cavalry came smashing against the wall of men and muskets again and again, and artillery fire between each charge: sometime before half past 5, William Fraser lay helpless, shot through both knees. All that night, and next day and another night he lay among the great stench and groan of 40,000 men and 10,000 horses dead and dying, till he was taken to Brussels in a straw-lined cart and survived to croft at Balnamoon. So I exist to write this poem. ";
stb17= "Evening 24 July 1411
the ragged children herd black cows and horned sheep closer to the clachans turf houses on a furrowed hillside; in the pale smoke of wood fires bubble pots of kale and barley broth and in the street of the burgh squealing pigs and children chase around the booths, the ratty middens; the fishing folk sit darning nets, smears of silver in wicker creels
in the red dusk by the Urie water the Earl of Mar still stands within the shrunken knot of spear and steel surrounded by a shoal of dead an early harvest of hacked flesh ";
stb18= "Sisters
1. The battered rubber balls beat on the wall beside the kitchen door. The sisters stand side by side weaving patterns in air: unapproachable, almost frightening in their passionate intensity.
2. The sisters are in the bathroom. Has it been an hour, or more? Their muffled voices slide under the door in a swoon of scented steam. Are they splashing water at each other? are they bombing sponges with the soap? No. They are forced by strange madness to become totally spotless and clean.
3. The upturned table is a fine raft, its thick round legs good to swing on as high seas surge and heave. One sister brings the tablecloth to spread draped over the legs, to keep off the sun as we drift to desert islands. Another brings a toy teapot and tiny cups, the third clambers aboard with a shipwrecked doll. The raft sails on, the sailor expects pirates any minute, but now a greater danger threatens - the sisters have made themselves at home, are thoughtlessly running off for this and that, and either they are walking on water or we've just run aground.
4. The sisters are out to the shops. And though no-one is around he hides behind the armchair, nervous of mocking discovery. His furtive hands move stealthily as he begins to explore the strange and secret world of their comics.
5. The sisters are not just girls. They are not impressed by his tricks. Like witches they look through him with a knowing indifference.
6. He's feeling big. He's just kissed the girl old enough to have a saturday job at the cafe on the links. His sisters and hers run around the echoing house, disturbing dreamy rooms and gloomy corridors, shrieking the news with their hands at their mouths, giggling madly between outrage and delight. ";
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