Translation Of A Non-Existent Gaelic Poem Poem by Sally Evans

It was not in my expectation
that you would understand this poem
so here is the English:
it will not speak in yoru sentiments
nor sing in your heart
for it is not the full shilling,
only broken and bruised
wuill it hope to utter the words themselves,
roan and yellow flowers
on the dappled floor of the woods
of the dictionaries,
the bright coin of its imagery
glinting in dark hollows
where the huntsmen crooned their lament
to the four winds of meaning.

The poem fluttered past
when you were not looking for it,
because it was you yourself
that was fishing in the water for it,
it was you I saw in your boat
anchored among the rocks
where my words might be shipwrecked,
waterlogged shoals of song
off the island's lee.

It was in my expectation
you would listen to my poem's music,
that is why I wrote the bloody thing,
striving in my workshop
with quern, loom and distaff -
trying to make some sense
of those old-fashioned implements,
and it was to you I sent the email
from my croft, when the postman
couldn't get through the snowdrifts,
but I run my computer off the generator
so I can get my poems down to you
in Edinburgh or Glasgow
before I have even written them,

before I have ventured out
across the hill of experience
in the quest for the poem 's ending
so difficult of attainment -
as I sit here by my fireside
finishing my dram and my dream.


(1998)