The Goat: An Assay

The latest edition of New Writing Scotland (ASLS, £9.95), the 35th no less, arrives featuring new short stories and poems from a collection of emerging voices and established favourites. Goats are possibly a neglected subject for poets; certainly, after reading Lydia Harris’s meditation, ‘The Goat: An Assay’, one could stand to hear more about this intriguing creature. Harris was given a Scottish Book Trust New Writer Award for poetry earlier this year and lives in Westray, Orkney.

The bell round your neck chimes to the creeping willow; chimes underground where the water you turn into milk scrambles and rises.

In summer old women in scarves finger your ears as if they were spindles.

Your bleat is a crimped linen collar. Lappets hang from your chin. You sprout hair on your belly.

You teach me the way of hard beds, of paths through the snow-line. You with your warm knobs of horn and eyes like gall-spangles.

You rescue our wild, rocky places, will not yield your milk to a stranger. There’s no pit of fire or ice your cries can’t transfigure.

You can find a copy of She Said He Said I Said: New Writing Scotland 35 edited by Diana Hendry and Susie Maguire at the Scottish Poetry Library, 5 Crichton’s Close, Edinburgh EH8 8DT, www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk