POEM OF THE DAY

TWO spring poems by Kenneth Steven celebrate the coming of sunshine and new spring life in places of the Highlands and island. The second work may be familiar but sits so well in this context. They are from Steven’s Collected Poems (Saint Andrew Press, Edinburgh, 2009).

A DAY IN APRIL

Twelve o’clock. She stands in the back porch,

Strands of golden hair tangling her face.

She calls his name; her voice is blown away.

He looks up nonetheless, as though he’s heard

Somewhere deep inside. Light scours the hills,

Gullies of wind sweep back the shadow.

Fleet’s heard her, flows down the field

In a bouncing waterfall of black and white.

She smiles. A lamb pities the air With a cry as thin as milk. She turns inside.

He thuds the mud from his boots.

Has the mail come? Delivery from Hulberts?

The clock flickers softly in the hall; Up in the landing window the blue of April

A rippling flag of sky –

This land is in his hands

As surely as it ran his father’s.

At the table she rumbles the potatoes from the pan,

Looks at him with soft eyes. I’ve good news, she murmurs.

LAMB

I found a lamb

Tugged by the guyropes of the wind Trying so hard to get up.

It was no more than a trembling bundle

A bag of bones and wet wool

A voice made of crying, like a child’s.

What a beginning, what a fall,

To be born on the edge of the world Between the sea and America.

Lamb, out of this island of stone yellow is coming, golden promises, The buttery sunlight of spring.