OF THE DAY

ONE of the abiding themes of Scotland’s history is the experience of exile through emigration. Some of Iain Crichton Smith’s most poignant writing deals with the Clearances that banished people to North America. Here are two extracts from a poem that considers the subject in an antipodean context, describing how the exiles surrender themselves emotionally to the new country The piece comes from Crichton Smith’s New Collected Poems (Carcanet, £18.95, paperback).. AUSTRALIA

1 In Australia the trees are deathly white, the kangaroos are leaping halfway to heaven but land at last easily on the earth. Sometimes I hear graves singing their Gaelic songs to the dingos which scrabble furiously at the clay. Then tenderly in white they come towards me, drifting in white, the far exiles buried in the heart of brown deserts. It is a strange language they speak not Australian but Gaelic while the green eyes stalk them under a moon the same as ours, but different, different.

3 No, you will not return from Australia However you may wish to do so. For you have surrender to its legend, to its music being constantly reborn, to the eerie whine of its deserts. Somehow or another it entered your soul And however much you remember Scotland, its graves sanctified by God, its historical darknesses, you will not return from it. Its dust is in your nostril its tenderness has no justice, its millions of stars are the thoughts of unbridled horsemen. With blue eyes you will stare blinded into its blueness and when you remember your rivers, the graveyards the mountains, it is Australia that stands up in front of you, your question, your love.