Edinburgh comes alight

I know I blipped one of the poetry volumes (which I'd recently picked up at 'Barter Books') just a few days ago --- but I can't resist putting up this other, rather marvelous, 'Barter Books find' quickly thereafter ...

... as best as I can establish, Robin Robertson's first published poetry collection was 'A Painted Field' which came out in 1997 - it did include a long sequence entitled 'Camera Obscura', which itself had been separately distributed in a limited print edition (of 232 copies) the year before; 1996.

And yes, you've guessed it; I managed to find a copy (number 79, as you can see!), of that limited edition print-run, at Barter Books for just a few pounds :-))

I'm fairly certain it's worth at least ten times what I paid for it - not that I'll be selling it anytime soon!

Here's part of the sequence, from within this pictured 1996 print:


Dumb Show, with Candles

Still as a battlefield, the strewn city
goes under, slips into silhouette.
Some threads of smoke,
the lift and fall of flags in orange light.
The glinting windows go out one by one.

Low over the Firth, a fork of geese
comes pulling past, straight-necked:
creaking like rowlocks
over the frozen hill.
On the Parthenon below, querulous gulls
screel and skraik and peel away,
bickering, into the air’s tow.
Too cold, even for them.
I circle the observatory one more time:
mine the only footprints in the snow.

Now the night has fallen, Edinburgh comes alight
as if each building’s shell
has a fire inside that burned. The follies
– lit exhibits – stand here on the hill
in their white stone; the Castle glows.
And the streets are bright blurs of sodium
and pearl: the drawn tracery of headlamps
smeared in long exposure. For miles west
the city stretches,
laid with vapour trails and ghosts.

To the east, the folding sea has drowned
the girning of the gulls. A lighthouse
perforates the night: a slow cigarette.
Then there is no more light,
and no more breath or sound.

---

Robin Robertson (1955 - )

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