Mr and Mrs Scotland are Dead (by Kathleen Jamie)

Griffin Prize for Excellence In Poetry, The (2001 - 0)

Original Text

Kathleen Jamie, Mr and Mrs Scotland are Dead: Poems 1980-1994 (Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books, 2002). This poem is reproduced on the Griffin Prize Web Site (from a volume on the 2003 International Shortlist).

1On the civic amenity landfill site,

2the coup, the dump beyond the cemetery

3and the 30-mile-an-hour sign, her stiff

4old ladies’ bags, open mouthed, spew

5postcards sent from small Scots towns

6in 1960: Peebles, Largs, the rock-gardens

7of Carnoustie, tinted in the dirt.

8Mr and Mrs Scotland, here is the hand you were dealt:

9fair but cool, showery but nevertheless,

10Jean asks kindly; the lovely scenery;

11in careful school-room script--

12The Beltane Queen was crowned today.

13But Mr and Mrs Scotland are dead.

14Couldn’t he have burned them? Released

15in a grey curl of smoke

16this pattern for a cable knit? Or this:

17tossed between a toppled fridge

18and sweet-stinking anorak: Dictionary for Mothers

19M:- Milk, the woman who worries …;

20And here, Mr Scotland’s John Bull Puncture Repair Kit;

21those days when he knew intimately

22the thin roads of his country, hedgerows

23hanged with small black brambles’ hearts;

24and here, for God’s sake, his last few joiners’ tools,

25SCOTLAND, SCOTLAND, stamped on their tired handles.

26Do we take them? Before the bulldozer comes

27to make more room, to shove aside

28his shaving brush, her button tin.

29Do we save this toolbox, these old-fashioned views

30addressed, after all, to Mr and Mrs Scotland?

31Should we reach and take them? And then?

32Forget them, till that person enters

33our silent house, begins to open

34to the light our kitchen drawers,

35and performs for us this perfunctory rite:

36the sweeping up, the turning out.

RPO poem Editors

Ian Lancashire

RPO Edition

2011