This morning - Sunday - four of us went running
Across the links and back by the West Sands
Hardly seeing anyone: once, waving his hands
A ranger steered us from the tonsured green -
- A really quite unnecessary gesture
As I'd been running there for forty years
And was unlikely to offend against
The code of practice governing the links
Access to which I once helped to defend
Against encroachments from the hostile forces
Outside St Andrews. Just as the tide continues
At intervals to tear and rip the coastline,
Trying to suck the sandy links back into
The estuary and make it as it was
A thousand years ago, a drifting dune-land
So too often outsiders come and marvel
At all the privileges we've enjoyed,
Or rather fought hard for to get and maintain
Over the centuries. We won't be quick
To give them up and find ourselves again
Like medieval serfs unable to
Take full advantage of the natural
Surroundings, golf, walk, do what we want
Against the horizon of Balmullo's hills
And eastern backdrop of the silver sea -
Leaving aside historical diversions
I'll stop before I start to cast aspersions
Against the living; and get back to rhyme
Leaving blank verse until another time
When I'm expressing uncontrolled emotion
Or trying to simulate ourselves in motion.
The metaphor of running's hard to shake
Off: we start and end, put on and take
Off our T-shirts, shorts, shoes at the same place,
Shower, put the dirty clothes away in case
Someone should find them lying still
Piled in a heap on carpet or windowsill.
The circuits we cover are never quite the same
But still approximately bear the name
Of those locations that we know so well:
Strathtyrum, Denhead, Spinkie Den, Mount Mel-
Ville, even if we're feeling good
Out to Kingsbarns or through Blebo Wood
Down to the Dura where it glides along
Past fossil fish forever trapped among
The sandstone cliffs, well shaded by the trees.
Through Dura Den in winter there's a breeze:
Alternate cold and warm currents of air
Form a sort of mini sauna there
As you run past up the Pitscottie road
Wearing a phosphorescent yellow vest
So that car's headlights will pick out your chest
Or back, with its reflective patch or stripe
To keep you safe as you give specs a wipe:
The misty droplets vanish from your eyes.
Without them, your view seems to synthesize
Road, dusk, and trees into a composite
Blurred grey confusion. Is it apposite
To say that life itself's just as confusing,
By turns exciting, pedestrian, amusing ?
Just like a long run, really: off you go
Despite a nine-month warm-up you start off slow
And without noticing begin to race
A little bit, till you reach steady pace.
No harm in stopping to take in the view
Every so often, every mile or two
Pause to admire the hills of North East Fife
Up beyond Dairsie, where the pace of life
Seems to slow down. Among the bumpy hills
With their steep pastures, clumps of woodland, rills
Running through valleys where, I often say,
'Civilisation' could be a hundred miles away
Although it's only three or four at most.
Then, jogging on past fences where each post
Takes you a few yards further down the hill
Or up it, or along the flat, until
After an hour or so, perhaps even longer
You belt downhill with your heart feeling stronger
Into the town to cover that last mile
Weary perhaps, but often with a smile
Despite the tiredness: something worthwhile done-
Even though it earned nothing, you enjoyed the run.
What more is there to say of all activity?
The total sum of human productivity
Serves to increase our comfort and improve
Living conditions for those that we love
Or have to cherish whether we wish or not
Since Fate or Chance (twin sisters) give no thought
For our desires: we must accommodate
Ourselves - and do - to any stroke of Fate
Whether benevolent or the opposite.
There's no point in giving up and sitting
Like some street beggar, half-asleep, half-spitting
With bowl beside you:'Have no house or job,
Children to feed'. If you try, Fate may put up a lob
That you can smash into her left hand court
And leave her sprawling, so that the report
In next day's paper will have you the winner
By a huge margin.
In Rintoul and Skinner
(The 'Poet's Quair' - a wonderful selection
From Ballads to Auden - in my recollection
The basis of what knowledge I possess
Of metre, rhythm, metaphor and stress;
Both of them taught me, Skinner in First Year,
Rintoul in Sixth, a man I still hold dear
Although he must be dead now long ago.
Ho once paid me a compliment, the first
I can remember, after I had burst
The tape the previous evening in a race,
A mile, the earliest in which my pace
Instead of slowing had increased over the last lap
So that I suddenly became a chap
'Not only clever, but an athlete too':
David, these were the very words that you
Used to me in the Library. Does your shade recall
Them still ? I hope so, for to me of all
The nice things (there've been some) that I have had
Said to my face (behind my back the bad)
These were the best, because the first: so thanks
To you who showed us that even within the ranks
Of Tuscany (the staff) some could not forbear
To cheer. That all happened in the year
Nineteen fifty seven - more than forty years away
Clear, but remote. Think of the Isle of May
Which we see blue-silhouetted in the Firth
Off Anstruther. There you can see the birth
Or rather the emergence from the shell
Of baby puffins, gulls and such as well,
And yet all that is seven miles across
The swell, white breakers which can toss
The boat and all the passengers about.
Sometimes it's stormy and we can't put out
To sea, or else on getting near we find
That landing is too dangerous. My mind
In the same way can switch back four decades
And pinpoint details of these escapades,
But someone else was there, it wasn't me
And I can't turn back the hands of history,
Nor do I really want to. I prefer
To look ahead, to set off the momentum
Of the stage stage of the continuum.
(The rhyme is wrong, I know: Sir Kenneth Dover
Spotted a few faults like that looking over
A poem I sent him about misuse
Of the apostrophe and the abuse
Of punctuation rules by academics
Or stall-holders, all prone to epidemics
Of putting 's where there should be
None. Just read on, let it be.)
As I was saying - within the Poet's Quair
Are poems that I can quote, until the air
Is thick with friends all asking me to stop.
Gray's Elegy, Browning's Last Duchess, or
The corn lying Keatsian on the threshing floor
Burns' 'Tam o' Shanter', Tennyson's lament
For Arthur's death, the murderous intent
Of generals for poor Siegried Sassoon
St Agnes'Eve, as chilly as the moon
Shining on trenches in the First World War:
All these poets, kings of metaphor,
Rhythm and scansion, everything that brings
Language together. Their poetry sings
In many voices, nightingale or dove,
Garden birds, mighty-pinioned eagles up above
Singing their crystal songs of hate or love.
Poets are so different, but they all have parity
As singers in the choir of human circularity.
