She Was Buckets...

Even before I started studying Scottish Literature where I've been able to look at his work indepth, Norman MacCaig has always been my favourite poet. Seeing as it is indeed World Poetry Day and I'm ironically in the middle of writing a 4500 word essay on him, I thought I'd share one of my all time favourite poems:

AUNT JULIA

Aunt Julia spoke Gaelic

very loud and very fast.

I could not answer her —

I could not understand her.

She wore men's boots

when she wore any.

— I can see her strong foot,

stained with peat,

paddling with the treadle of the spinningwheel

while her right hand drew yarn

marvellously out of the air.

Hers was the only house

where I've lain at night

in a box bed, listening to

crickets being friendly.

She was buckets

and water flouncing into them.

She was winds pouring wetly

round house-ends.

She was brown eggs, black skirts

and a keeper of threepennybits

in a teapot.

Aunt Julia spoke Gaelic

very loud and very fast.

By the time I had learned

a little, she lay

silenced in the absolute black

of a sandy grave

at Luskentyre.

But I hear her still, welcoming me

with a seagull's voice

across a hundred yards

of peatscrapes and lazybeds

and getting angry, getting angry

with so many questions

unanswered.