Scots featured poem - October 2009

This piece of writing was selected by the staff at the Scottish Poetry Library which receives Foundation funding from the Scottish Arts Council

Waas eftir Cavafy Wi nae obleegement, nae peety, nae a sklent o shame, They’ve biggit waas aroun me, strang an heich. An noo I hunker here, wanhope chittlin ma wame. I cannae sei past this weird. I’m dune. I’m dreich. I’d sae sae muckle tae be daein still, ootby. Aa yon days they biggit the waas, hoo come I didnae ken – it’s daft – But I nivver heared yon biggars, nae ae saft soun, but gey Certie, bit by bit, they’ve snibbed me aff.   Walls With no kindness, no pity, not a sideways glance of shame, they have built walls around me, strong and high. And now I crouch down here, despair nibbling my heart. I cannot see past this disaster. I’m exhausted. I’m dreary. I had so much still to get on with, out there. All those days when they built the walls, how come I did not realise – it’s stupid – but I never heard those builders, not one soft sound, though absolutely surely, bit by bit, they have cut me off. From New Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, edited by Robert Crawford (Edinburgh: Polygon, 2009)

About the poet Robert Crawford (b 1959) grew up in Lanarkshire and has published six collections of poetry, the most recent of which, 'Full Volume' (Cape, 2008) was shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize.  His biography of Robert Burns, The Bard, was published by Jonathan Cape and Princeton University Press in 2009.  He is Professor of Modern Scottish Literature at the University of St Andrews and editor of 'New Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect'.

Inspiration for the Poem Waas is a version of Cavafy's poem Teiche, which I've known since my late teens and seems to me one of the great poems of the twentieth century. I remember hearing a talk about Cavafy's work when I studied Greek for a year at Glasgow University: my Greek has all rotted away, but I've read Cavafy in several English versions, looking across at the original. Waas is one of several Scots versions of Cavafy I've made, some of them transposing Alexandria to Edinburgh.