[Poékwot] Iomallachd / Remoteness (Meg Bateman)

A poem from Meg Bateman, original in Gaelic and English transcription, in These Islands We Sing (anthology of contemporary Scottish poems, edited by Kevin MacNeil, 2011). The poem is a lucid, crystal-clear chiasmus between two places, two ages, two exiled communities.

I love the style of Meg Bateman (so different from mine). She wrote a poem / song about the burial of Sorley McLean, the great poet from Raasay Island (between Skye and the Highlands), and the poem is delicate yet real, so real that one could use it as a blanket or a frying pan. And now for Iomallachd.

Iomallachd

Chan eil iomallachd sa Ghàdhealtachd ann -
le càr cumhachdach
ruigear an t-àite taobh a-staigh latha;
's e luimead na hoirthir
a shàraich na daoine
is a chuir thar lear iad
a tha gar tàladh an-diugh,
na làraichean suarach a dh'fhàgh iad
cho miannaichte ri gin san rìoghachd.

Och, an iomallachd, càit a bheil thu?
Càit ach air oir lom nam bailtean,
sna towerblocks eadar motorways
far am fuadaichear na daoine
gu iomall a' chumhachd,
an aon fhiaradh goirt nan sùlean
's a chithear an aodann sepia nan eilthireach
(a bha mise riamh an dùil
gum biodh an Nàdar air dèanamh àlainn). 

 Remoteness

The Higlands are not remote any more -
with a powerful car

you can reach the place in a day;

it is the bleakness of the coast

that wore the people down

and sent them overseas

that draws us today,

the miserable sites they left

as desired as any in the land.

Alas, remoteness, where are you?

Where but at the bleak edge of the cities,

in the towerblocks between motorways

where people are removed

edged out from power,

the same hurt squint in their eyes

as is seen in the emigrants' sepia faces
(that I had fully expected
Nature to have made beautiful).

Meg Bateman by Robyn Grant

 Iomallachd / Remoteness, Meg Bateman