February - Not Everywhere
Such days, when trees run downwind,
their arms stretched before them.

Such days, when the sun's in a drawer
and the drawer is locked.

When the meadow is dead, is a carpet
thin and shabby, with no pattern

and at bus stops people retract into collars
their faces like fists.

- And when, in a firelit room, a mother looks
at her four seasons, her little boy,

in the centre of everything, with still pools
of shadows and a fire throwing flowers.

Norman MacCaig

Norman MacCaig, one of the great Scottish poets of the twentieth century, used to drink in Bennets Bar in Edinburgh. With his piercing blue eyes and acerbic wit he was not a man to take lightly, but on the couple of occasions I met him he was certainly entertaining company. Hugh MacDiarmid, whose dying word was said to be 'Norman', regarded him as his natural successor. However, unlike MacDiarmid, MacCaig had a great economy of style, claiming mischievously that he only composed poems short enough to fit onto a single sheet of paper in his typewriter. What a great simile -- 'their faces like fists'!