Read The Overhaul Online

Authors: Kathleen Jamie

The Overhaul

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winds up swagged to the next … Then they’re flown, and the cliff’s left

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The Overhaul

ALSO BY KATHLEEN JAMIE

Poetry

The Tree House

Jizzen

The Queen of Sheba

The Way We Live

Black Spiders

Waterlight: Selected Poems

Nonfiction

Among Muslims

Findings

Sightlines

Kathleen Jamie
The Overhaul
POEMS

GRAYWOLF PRESS

Copyright © 2012 by Kathleen Jamie

First published by Picador, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, London.

This publication is made possible, in part, by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, and through grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Wells Fargo Foundation Minnesota. Significant support has also been provided by Target, the McKnight Foundation, Amazon.com, and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. To these organizations and individuals we offer our heartfelt thanks.

Published by Graywolf Press

250 Third Avenue North, Suite 600

Minneapolis, Minnesota 55401

All rights reserved.

www.graywolfpress.org

Published in the United States of America

ISBN 978-1-55597-702-3

Ebook ISBN 978-1-55597-902-7

2  4  6  8  9  7  5  3  1

First Graywolf Printing, 2015

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014950980

Cover design: Jeenee Lee Design

Cover art:
Shetland Fourern
, linocut by James Dodds

for P. and D. and F.

Contents

The Beach

The Dash

Five Tay Sonnets

1. Ospreys

2. Springs

3. May

4. Excavation & Recovery

5. ‘Doing Away’

Fragment 1

Fragment 2

The Longhouse

The Study

Hawk and Shadow

The Stags

Highland Sketch

A Raised Beach

Swifts

The Spider

The Gather

Roses

The Overhaul

Halfling

An Avowal

The Galilean Moons

The Bridge

Tae the Fates

Moon

The Lighthouse

Glamourie

The Roost

The Wood

The Whales

The Widden Burd

Hauf o’ Life

Even the Raven

Materials

Acknowledgements

The Overhaul
The Beach

Now this big westerly’s

blown itself out,

let’s drive to the storm beach.

A few brave souls

will be there already,

eyeing the driftwood,

the heaps of frayed

blue polyprop rope,

cut loose, thrown back at us –

What a species –

still working the same

curved bay, all of us

hoping for the marvellous,

all hankering for a changed life.

The Dash

Every mid-February

those first days arrive

when the sun rises

higher than the Black

Hill at last. Brightness

and a crazy breeze

course from the same airt –

turned clods gleam, the trees’

topmost branches bend

shivering downwind.

They chase, this lithe pair

out of the far south

west, and though scalding

to our wintered eyes

look
, we cry,
it’s here

Five Tay Sonnets
1. OSPREYS

You’ll be wondering why you bothered: beating

up from Senegal, just to hit a teuchit storm –

late March blizzards and raw winds – before the tilt

across the A9, to arrive, mere

hours apart, at the self-same riverside

Scots pine, and possess again the sticks and fishbones

of last year’s nest: still here, pretty much

like the rest of us – gale-battered, winter-worn,

half toppled away …

So redd up your cradle, on the tree-top,

claim your teind from the shining

estates of the firth, or the trout-stocked loch.

What do you care? Either way,

there’ll be a few glad whispers round town today:

that’s them, baith o’ them, they’re in.

2. SPRINGS

Full March moon and gale-force easters, the pair of them

sucking and shoving the river

back into its closet in the hills, or trying to. Naturally

the dykes failed, the town’s last fishing boat

raved at the pier-head, then went down; diesel-

corrupted water cascaded into front-yards, coal-holes, garages,

and
there’s naethin ye can dae
,

said the old boys, the sages, which may be true; but river –

what have you left us? Evidence of an inner life, secrets

of your estuarine soul hawked halfway

up Shore Street, up East and Mid Shore, and arrayed

in swags all through the swing-park: plastic trash and broken reeds,

driftwood, bust TVs …

     and a salmon,

dead, flung beneath the see-saw, the crows are onto at once.

3. MAY

Again the wild blossom

powering down at dusk, the gean trees

a lather at the hillfoot

and a blackbird, telling us

what he thinks to it, telling us

what he thinks …

How can we bear it? A fire-streaked sky, a firth

decked in gold, the grey clouds passing

like peasant-folk

lured away by a prophecy.

          What can we say

the blackbird’s failed

to iterate already? Night calls:

the windows of next-door’s glass house

crimson, then go mute

4. EXCAVATION & RECOVERY

Then specialists arrived, in hi-viz jackets and hardhats

who floundered out every low tide

to the log-boat, lodged

in the mud since the Bronze Age. Eventually

it was floated to the slipway, swung high

in front of our eyes: black, dripping, aboriginal

– an axe-hewn hollowed-out oak

sent to the city on a truck.

What were you to them, river, who hollered

‘Shipping water!’ or ‘Ca’ canny lads!’ in some now

long-forgotten tongue?

an estuary with a discharge of 160 cubic metres of water per second

as per the experts’ report?

or Tay/Toi/Taum
    – a goddess;

    the Flowing(?), the Silent One(?).

5. ‘DOING AWAY’

Nowhere to go, nowhere I’d rather be

than here, fulfilling my daily rituals.

          Why would one want

to absent oneself, when one’s commute

is a lonely hillside by-way, high

above the river? Specially when the tide’s

way out, leaving the firth

like a lovers’ bed with the sheets stripped back

baring its sandbanks, its streamy rivulets,

– the whole thing shining

like an Elfland, and all a mere two fields’

stumbling walk away …

Someday I’ll pull into a passing-place

a mile from home, and leave the car,

 

when they find it

engine thrumming quietly

Fragment 1

Roe deer,

breaking from a thicket

bounding over briars

between darkening trees

you don’t even glance

at the cause of your doubt

so how can you tell

what form I take?

What form I take

I scarcely know myself

adrift in a wood

in wintertime at dusk

always a deer

breaking from a thicket

for a while now

this is how it’s been

Fragment 2

Imagine we could begin

all over again; begin

afresh, like this February

dawn light, coaxing

from the Scots pines

their red ochre, burnt-earth glow.

All over again. South

– facing mountainsides, balcony

above balcony of pines – imagine

we could mend

whatever we heard fracture:

splintering of wood, a bird’s

cry over still water, a sound

only reaching us now

The Longhouse

Who lives here? Don’t

you remember that hill? How it

shut out any winter sun –

or those ash trees

sheltering the gable end?

Hefted to its own land

like its few yowes –

Today the wind’s swung north –

in overcoats and headscarves

two women are crossing the yard

As if yoked together,

they stall, and turn to face us –

and though you look

from one to the other,

one to the other,

you just can’t tell

which is daughter, which mother …

This is what happens.

This is why we loosed our grip and fled

like the wind-driven smoke

from the single lum

in the crooked roof that covers

both women and beasts, a roof

low and broken like a cry

The Study

Moon,

 

what do you mean,

entering my study

like a curiosity shop,

stroking in mild concern

the telescope mounted

on its tripod, the books,

the attic stair? You

who rise by night, who draw

the inescapable world

closer, a touch,

to your gaze – why

query me? What’s mine

is yours; but you’ve no more

need of those implements

than a deer has,

browsing in a glade.

Moon, your work-

worn face bright

outside unnerves me.

Please, be on your way.

Hawk and Shadow

I watched a hawk

glide low across the hill,

her own dark shape

in her talons like a kill.

She tilted her wings,

fell into the air –

the shadow coursed on

without her, like a hare.

Being out of sorts

with my so-called soul,

part unhooked hawk,

part shadow on parole,

I played fast and loose:

keeping one in sight

while forsaking the other.

The hawk gained height:

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