I've grown up in the Highlands of Scotland. My mother's people came from Wester Ross, one of the wildest parts of the country, with more deer and sheep by far than humans. During the 19th Century many thousands were evicted from their crofts by the landlords, the lairds, and sent to the growing cities or to America or Australia. Most of them never returned. It's often a landscape that foreigners fall in love with: these rugged miles of heather-covered, treeless hills. Yet it's actually a ravaged landscape; it has been transformed by man, and by centuries of bad management. But even to this day you can find the remains of those ruined crofts; the scars and the sadness of the clearances are still all too evident. At the moment, Scotland is in the process of working out what it wants to be; whether it will remain part of the United Kingdom or find the courage to become independent once more. This poem, now part of my volume of selected poems Island, reflects on all the questions we're asking.
The State of Scotland
See this land through a broken window,
all huddled in mist, rocked by storm,
the whole long drudge of winter.
Half its people want to leave;
the other half who want to stay
don't choose, they have no choice.
Our history is written in the hills. We are filled
with pride for what we think we did
and guilt for what we didn't do.
We drift into cities since we cannot stand
the sound of our own thoughts. We spend our lives
being loud, and trying to forget.
Do we want freedom or just the chance
to mourn not having it? We are willing to fight
for all that we don't want.
