8 English Poems (Comings & Goings) Poem by Sheena Blackhall

1.A Visit to the Theatre,1942
My husband has treated us to a box seat
Directly overlooking the stage.
I shall of course, still be using
My opera glasses. A woman in my position
Must maintain standards
There is no point in having wealth,
If you cannot display it.
We are neither furtive people
Nor are we by nature, hoarders

The three bastions of the city:
Education, Salvation, and Damnation
The statue of William Wallace points the way

Our Clarence has settled nicely into Gordons
(such a decent set of pupils, those of his class)
And Edward and I have our own pew
Right at the front of St Nicholas church itself

We just HAD to come to enjoy the Noel Coward season
Blithe Spirit, (though Edward says that séances are tosh…)
And then there was that dreadful stagehand business
Decapitated, we're told by a stage hoist.
They say he walks, that he's been seen to glide.
Myself, I think it's a trick to pull folk in.

Still, with the war on, one must do one's bit
By supporting our entertainers. It is our civic duty, after all.

Edward, poor dear was dreadfully cut up
When he was deemed as being unfit to serve
Flat feet are such a burden for him to bear


2. Aberdeen Comb Works, Hutcheon Street
At its peak, the largest in the world,
The comb works fashioned goods from horn and hoof,
From patterned tortoiseshell and modern plastics
From whalebone, ivory, to groom men's beards
And turn out cups, scoops, combs of every style
And paper cutters, shoehorns and the like
From buffalo horns, shipped in from round the world

Not catering for coxcombs, fops, or dandies
But Aberdonians, weeding out the lice
Or parting shades to keep their locks in check
Sliding though brillcream, dandruff, tangles, knots


3.The Song Birds
Stolen from the nest with skill
Blinded. Pain unspeakable
All to sweeten each bird's trill
Singing from a heart on fire

No wind strokes each feathery quill
No cloud-bound flight, o'er tree or rill
No mate, no hope of life tranquil
All, all to bend to man's desire

Imprisoned by a wicker grille
Caged close: a fate insufferable
Trained and bent to owner's will
Can such enforcèd art inspire

Never as free's the whip-o-will
A prison's gloom, a captive bill
Never to see the dawn-light spill
Over the trees of town and shire

Delicate, timid oh how chill
A world of dark. Lamentable
Day upon dreary day to fill
Never to join the woodland choir

Sweet songster, I would not fulfil
My jailor's orders. Rather, kill
The music on a funeral pyre
And dying, burn the cursèd lyre


4.Memorabilia: Aberdeen
In this city, skulls and bones
Curses, witchcraft, storma and sailors
Granite, cobbles, tunnels, oil
Ghosts of gallows, ghost of jailors

Guilds and unicorns of stone
Markets. Universities
Fitty, Torry, Don & Dee
Whey-faced beggars cough and wheeze

Pocra Quey, Houdini's antics
Docks and fogs, seafaring city
North Sea gales, the Devil's Hole
Skate's nose, Abercrombie's jetty

Ferries, trawlers, cruisers, vessels
Rubislaw quarry: lover's leap
Holding deep the drowned detritus
Stolen car, abandoned jeep

The Seven Trades. The Flesher's Window
Mason's old mysterious walls
Face of Hate at Provost Skene's
Glowers at glassy shopping malls


5.Visit Scotland
Arbuthnott, Gleneagles, Crieff Hydro, Glencoe
Little Sparta, and Samy Ling, Troon, Linlithgow

The Kelpies, the Quiraing, Glen Affric, The Spey
Pluscarden, Rothiemurchas, Iona, Orkney

Dumfries, Puck's Glen, Campbeltown, Dyce, Inverness
Ben Nevis, Loch Lomond, Glen Etive, Stromness

Stac Polly, The Summer Isles, Old Man of Storr
The Trossachs, the Pentland Firth where storm roar

Stonehave, Skye, Knoidart, Glen Lyon & Crathes
The Eildon Hills, Barra, The Lairig Ghru's passes

The Canongate, Forth Road Bridge, Pennan, Rosehearty
Dunningston, Gardenstown, Rosslyn, Cromarty

Colonsay, Kelvingrove, Callander, Harris
Argyll, Lewis, Stirling, Skara Brae and the Barras

Aberdeen, Inverness, Cults and Buccleugh
All jewels in our country, come, visit and view


6.Smugglerius
Carlini, Italian sculptor, settled in England
Is known for church monuments,
Paintings in oils and such
And for making a cast
Of the flayed corpses of a smuggler
Posed as a Roman statue, ‘The Dying Gaul'
An unusual commission by any artistic standards

Thomas Henmen, fresh-hung tea smuggler,
Murderer of a poor customs officer
Upon the Deptford turnpike
Provided, post mortem, the necessary corpse
For the furtherance of medical students' knowledge
His body, separated from the gallows
Prior rigor mortis, was arranged and posed
Dried out overnight.(The Murder Act had given surgeons rights
To dissect six hanged corpses, year on year)

Now Henmen's viewed by fine art connoisseurs
A copy of his musculature,
In Edinburgh's fine College of Art
Is a source for decades of young artists' sketches

William Hunter, famed anatomist,
Physician, leading obstetrician
South Lanarkshire man by birth
Travelled to London, worked until he dropped

Physician of Queen Charlotte
He studied the anatomical work of Da Vinci
(His home in Glasgow, now the Hunterian Museum)

He it was who acquired the smuggler's body
Had him flayed and reproduced in bronze
Affording the subject a kind of immortality
Willing or not, a felon's gift to science
7.Six American Proverbs
Life is simpler when you plough around the stump.
Words that soak into your ears are whispered.
Meanness doesn't happen overnight.
Forgive your enemies; it messes up their heads.
It don't take a very big person to carry a grudge.
Don't judge folk by their relatives.


8.New-Born
You drink love in like dew
From a pure snowdrop

Your mind is cloudless
We tilt our faces over you like trees
Hungry to shelter and greet you