Early Rising

Morningtide floods through shoals of rippled cloud,
dawn sunshine daubed across the bedroom wall;
my daughter playing with a crystal ball,
the rainbow angels dancing round her head.

Nightlights still burning strong outlast the night,
curtains thrown wide, no sanctuary for
the shadow animal on the second floor;
the whole house, open, breathes in morning light.

Mackintoshes

I’m writing this to tell my baby daughter
– who took my pen to chew just now – about her
rambunctious forebears, Papists or Dissenters,
before they were Glasgow artists or inventors:
nine hundred years of sanguinary glories,
blood-fuelled vendettas, feuding feudatories,
feral mosstroopers, breekless in the heather,
sleeping out plaid-wrapped through all Highland weather;
conveniently detained during Flodden,
second at Bannockburn, first at Culloden;
Jacobite malcontents, staunch in lost causes,
schooled by reverses and misfortune’s tawses;
clan wildcat totem for crest and supporters,
red lion, boar’s head, heart in hand, ship quarters;
proud bearings passed through gentleman and peasant,
from those ancestral mountains to the present
ludicrous days of raincoats and galoshes:
ferocious, feckless, fearless Mackintoshes.

Lantau

Our house looks east: dawn rays relume
Arcadia door and balcony
opening on the endless sea,
forming one wall of our front room;
and at this time of year, the sun,
rising between my feet, unshrouds
obscure horizons stretched beyond
islands ephemeral as clouds.

The earth prostrates itself before
the progress of god Helios,
echoing light’s footfalls across
the ocean’s polished ballroom floor;
cutwater of a hydrofoil
etches its wake across the calm
annealed by light’s prismatic oil,
annointed with chrismatic balm.

A full moon querned the night’s black flour,
milling the star-chaff angels glean,
filling the beamy lofts between
the blue hour and the golden hour;
now radiant day resumes its realm,
sunbeams flood streambeds, coursing down
the valley walls to overwhelm
shadow’s levees round field and town.

The mountaintops are glorioled,
round sapphire cupola of sky,
mosaic saints exalted by
the spiritual light of gold,
and wooded slopes throw back the roar
of ‘Great Pan lives’, great Pan reborn
panikon deima – sounded for
the piper at the gates of dawn.

Such bell metal-tongued calls break through
life’s brassy everyday pizzazz
in settings as prosaic as
a supermarket checkout queue:
prophetic conscience wakening
in an unprophetable time;
words come unbidden, following
the happy accidence of rhyme.

Far off, the old world’s heat death throes
twist under Nature’s interdict,
voracious scavengers evict
the Himalayas’ homeless snows.
Apocalyptic angels’ vials
descant on our stupidity;
the Furies’ chorus now reviles
lost souls’ loveless cupidity.

But, at a distance from it all,
I see, as if in Merlin’s glass,
everything that came to pass
since the Temptation and the Fall;
fit for my wife and child to live,
a magical, enchanted place
where I can ultimately give
my contribution to the race.

Lullaby
(for Diana)

Hush, little baby, I implore,
and let your mother sleep some more,
and you shall have a treasure trove
of everything that comes with love:
the Christmas tree with all its lights
keeping its vigil through the night,
dry corncobs hanging on a string,
pumpkins and gourds, and festive things;
a water castle in a lake
to charm your dreams where, for your sake,
messengers ride north, south, east, west,
to fetch you back whatever’s best –
the bees’ sweet gold in crystal jars,
white diamonds fallen from the stars,
tame singing birds with rainbow feathers,
the amaranth that blooms for ever,
a cross-eyed robin on a card –
while household presences stand guard
over your head, cosily wrapped
and cradled gently in my lap,
the perfect circle of good faith,
unbreakable, to keep you safe.
All this I promise you, and more,
so let your mother sleep some more.