It's nice to go to Edinburgh.
Take the train in the opposite direction.
Passing through a hard land, a pitted
and pockmarked, slag scarred, scraped land.
Coal. Colossus of pit-bings,
and the stubborn moors where Covenanters died,
Hartwood, Shotts, Fauldhouse, Breich -
Somethuing stirs me here
where the green veneer is thin,
the black-gutand the quarried ash-red
show in the gashes.
But the land changes
Somewhere in the region of West and Mid Calder.
Greener and gentler, rolling Lothians,
Edinburgh. Your names are grander -
Waverley, nweington, Corstorphine,
never Cowcaddens, Hillhead or Partick.
No mean city
but genteel, grey and clean city
you diminish me -
make me feel my coat is cheap,
shabby, vulgar-coloured,
You make me aware of your architecture,
conscious of history and the way it has
of imposing itself upon people.
Princes Street.
I rush for Woolworth's anonymous aisles.
I feel at home here
You could be anywhere -
even in Glasgow.