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Phoebe Traquair's Angels
PT was an artist working in tapestry, embroidery, jewellery, enamelling but also in
large-scale frescoes in notably a catholic apostolic church, a children's hospital chapel and a music
school attached to a cathedral. She was Irish, married to a Scottish scientist and aligned with the arts
and crafts movement who believed that art should enhance the daily lives of the general public.
This red-winged angel of rapture
receiver of souls after
torture, the kind that life inflicts
stitch by embroidered stitch
The Progress of the Soul.
Is this red-winged angel
promoted from the ranks
who swell the Song School choirs
in Benedicite omnia opera?
or delegated from those who cradle
souls of dead children from
their hospital chapel?
or one of the seraphim
frescoed in serried praise
in the Apostolic church?
Pinions. Spilled blood. Tenderness.
Restoration. Comfort-ye, against
all odds, against indifference:
Take courage! Be not afraid!
Yet the red of these fluted wings
Is fresh-blood-bright
and swan-like in grandeur.
Tapestries of the soul; improvisations
of Spirit, plucking the strings
stitched on linen in spiralling silks,
gold, silver, satin stitch,
sumptuous.
Who receives today's dead children
blasted by bombs dropped 'collaterally'
or left for them in markets and buses
or infiltrating their schools?
What wings could sustain or soothe,
What colour depict? What linens?
What shrouds for wrapping the remnants?
And the bodies of children who slowly die
of infestation, infection, starvation, neglect ?
stretch your hands out gently for these
and fold your violent wings:
Who receives the bombers crimsoned
with rage and despair
red-winged
O angel of rupture.
Stem-stitch, split-stitch
Triptych. Tessa Ransford
String Theory
The universe is knitted out of string
that must be why we used to play 'cat's cradle'
hand to hand as children naturally
unravelling and ravelling the patterns
unending unbeginning in the loop
our fingers stretched to keep the needful tension.
Vibrating space is bendy now and warped
according to what energy and mass
what light or dark what cavernous black
holes or wormholes too miniscule
to comprehend may happen or come around
at any time. But Time is a dimension
of the whole if whole there is in such
a fluid gas or solid interweaving
in and out above below a field that
can transform, a field of forces weak
or strong, nuclear, gravitational
electromagnetic pulling and pushing us
beyond our mind's control much more
akin to what we sense and feel and
even what we think we might believe
of angels or thought-energised-by-love
with five percent made visible, the rest
seductive dark ex-static energy.
Oscillating filaments spin particles
as messengers across the mind of chaos
through branes, (yes spelt like that)
and whorls of branes poised in dimensions
of their own and even in another kind
of universe we hypothetically surmise.
Vibrating space is bendy now and warped
fluid gas or solid interweaving
seductive dark ex-static energy
messengers across the mind of chaos
fingers stretched to keep the needful tension
a universe that's knitted out of string.
Counting
Those who count
can count
and those who don’t count
don’t
Now the counters want to invent
a way of counting what can’t be counted
The counters need counters
to account for the uncountable
It gets them back to square one
Meanwhile those who don’t count
don’t count on it
They count themselves lucky
There’s nothing to it really
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Second Sight
Dragonfly
heaven's spy
beckoner
eye-catcher
follower
agitator
devil's needle
angel's spindle
slender legged
upper lipped
double wings
up in a whirr
shimmerings
now where
threadbare
pine and fir
the waterfall
dare or die
tells it all
dragonfly
Black Seas
Till all the seas run black
thick with oil
sludge with oil and
clog to death with oil
cormorants and gulls
their livid staring eyes
and beaks that turn to preen
and taste their own slow-choking death.
Till all along the coast
in swarms the fish will die
and all that lives on fish
a burning sea
a searing land
a poisoned world
by the hate we humans never fail
to foster till we choke
as we preen our blackened feathers.
Incantation 2000
(for George Wyllie's millennium stone inauguration 31st December 2000)
Navel stone of Caledon
marker of millennium
eye of seer, druid's tongue,
word of carlin, - stand upon
this footprint made for everyone.
As pebble cast into a pool
sends ripple upon ripple
so this sacred stone will tell,
bear witness, fair or fell,
to our truth and principle.
Once as chiefs stood on Dunadd
our land and loyalty they bled,
our corn, our cattle and our gold -
whoso worked with hand or head:
crofter, hunter - Somerled.
Now we forward step once more
reclaiming those who walked before:
builder, makar, engineer,
doctor, printer, traveller,
lad o'pairts and balladeer.
A step for Scotland carved in stone
a parliament without a throne
a country each of us can own
a wisdom, knowing as we are known,
a going forth and coming home.
Who among us now will work
for light that penetrates the dark
for freedom climbing like the lark
for the democratic spark -
whose the tread that fits this mark?
Croft
The grazing place of cattle
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on the rounded seaward slope
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The passing through, gateway
The brow of the hill, suncatcber,
Make feeding grounds for sheep
The place for corn to grow is
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in the minstrels' gallery
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where lark and curlew call
The fallow-field with hens and pony
These pieces form my land
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parts that I make fit together
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strength of hoe, scythe and spade
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bank of peat against the winter
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Children gather dulse and shells
and swim around the place of seals
Love of folk, place, work
names that make light in the dark.
True Story
I'm going to dance the night away
the dark the tedious faceless hours
I'm going to love my life today
reclaim delays and detours
The dark the tedious faceless hours
when no image carries me
within its passionate desires
and I forget my true story
When no image carries me
into the life I must demand
but I drudge on patiently
in vaguest hope of some reward
Into the life I must demand
I take the hint 1 take the lead
get up to dance and take the hand
take a turn and find the beat
I take the hint I take the lead
I take the floor I pirouette
I am dancing till I'm dead
my sun arisen image set.
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