Robin Robertson Poetry based work - 'At Roan Head' at Bankside gallery part of ' Splash' 04.07.18

'You'd know her house by the drawn blinds - 
by the cormorants pitched on the boundary wall, 
the black crosses of their wings hung out to dry. 
You'd tell it by the quicken and the pine that hid it 
from the sea and from the brief light of the sun,
and by Aonghas the collie, lying at the door
where he died: a rack of bones like a sprung trap.

A fork of barnacle geese came over, with that slow 
squeak of rusty saws. The bitter sea's complaining pull 
and roll; a whicker of pigeons, lifting in the wood.

She'd had four sons, I knew that well enough, 
and each one wrong. All born blind, they say, 
slack-jawed and simple, web-footed, 
rickety as sticks. Beautiful faces, I'm told, 
though blank as air. 
Someone saw them once, outside, hirpling 
down to the shore, chittering like rats, 
and said they were fine swimmers, 
but I would have guessed at that.

Her husband left her: said 
they couldn't be his, they were more 
fish than human, 
said they were beglamoured,
and searched their skin for the showing marks.

For years she tended each difficult flame: 
their tight, flickering bodies. 
Each night she closed 
the scales of their eyes to smoor the fire.

Until he came again, 
that last time, 
thick with drink, saying 
he'd had enough of this,
all this witchery, 
and made them stand 
in a row by their beds, 
twitching. Their hands 
flapped; herring-eyes 
rolled in their heads. 
He went along the line 
relaxing them 
one after another 
with a small knife.

It's said she goes out every night to lay 
blankets on the graves to keep them warm. 
It would put the heart across you, all that grief.

There was an otter worrying in the leaves, a heron 
loping slow over the water when I came 
at scraich of day, back to her door.

She'd hung four stones in a necklace, wore 
four rings on the hand that led me past the room 
with four small candles burning 
which she called ‘the room of rain'. 
Milky smoke poured up from the grate 
like a waterfall in reverse 
and she said my name 
and it was the only thing
and the last thing that she said.

​She gave me a skylark's egg in a bed of frost; 
gave me twists of my four sons' hair; gave me 
her husband's head in a wooden box.
Then she gave me the sealskin, and I put it on.' 
Robin Robertson - Poet