The Magicians of Scotland Read online

  THE MAGICIANS

  OF SCOTLAND

  Praise for Ron Butlin

  ‘When I’m asked for a recommendation of a great Scottish novel, [The Sound of My Voice] is my number one choice … and his poetry is exceptional’

  ALISTAIR BRAIDWOOD in Scots Whay Hae!

  ‘Remarkable … [Ghost Moon] is one of the most powerful and compelling pieces to emerge from the pen of this superb writer’

  ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH

  ‘[Belonging] is a genuine page-turner, unpredictable and devoid of cliché. I read it in a single sitting … The writing is of a rare order’

  EDDIE MUELLER in the San Francisco Chronicle

  ‘One of the great post-war Scottish novels … a genius piece of fiction’

  IRVINE WELSH

  ‘Butlin’s novel deserves to be talked about in the same breath as Saul Bellow’s Seize the Day’

  Metro

  ‘An extraordinarily powerful and redemptive work … Butlin’s only precursor is Kafka’

  Time Out

  ‘[Butlin] stands as a reminder that a good deal of world-class contemporary poetry and fiction goes largely unnoticed. There are few contemporary British writers whose works are as ripe for, and as thoroughly deserving of rediscovery’

  BRIAN HOYLE in British Writers, Supplement XVI

  (Scribner’s Sons, USA)

  Also by Ron Butlin

  FICTION

  The Sound of My Voice

  Night Visits

  The Tilting Room

  Vivaldi and the Number 3

  Belonging

  No More Angels

  Ghost Moon

  POETRY

  The Wonnerfu Warld o John Milton

  Stretto

  Creatures Tamed by Cruelty

  The Exquisite Instrument

  Ragtime in Unfamiliar Bars

  Histories of Desire

  Without a Backward Glance

  The Magicians of Edinburgh

  DRAMA

  We’ve Been Had

  Blending In

  Sweet Dreams

  OPERA LIBRETTI

  Markheim

  Dark Kingdom

  Faraway Pictures

  Good Angel, Bad Angel

  The Perfect Woman

  The Money Man

  Wedlock

  First published in Great Britain in 2015

  by Polygon,

  an imprint of Birlinn Ltd

  West Newington House

  10 Newington Road

  Edinburgh

  EH9 1QS

  www.polygonbooks.co.uk

  ISBN 9780857908919

  Poems copyright © Ron Butlin 2015

  The right of Ron Butlin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patent Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library.

  Book design and drawings © James Hutcheson

  Typeset in 10/14pt Veridgris MVB

  Printed and bound by Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  MAGIC PLACES

  The Electric City of Heck

  Disposable Buildings Are Made for Disposable Lives

  Edinburgh Doesn’t Scan That Easy

  Rehearsals for The End of Time

  Stations of The Rush Hour

  What the Well-Dressed City Wears

  The Roman Invasion of Scotland

  The Commonwealth Games:

  1 Starting the Race

  2 Africa

  3 Running the Race

  4 India (Raga)

  5 Caribbean

  6 Australia (Dream Time)

  7 Glasgow

  Near Linton Burnfoot

  MAGIC PEOPLE

  The Loch Ness Monster’s Post-Referendum Curse

  Frédéric Chopin Texts from the Edinburgh Hogmanay Party

  Professor Higgs Throws the Biggest Party …

  Sir James Simpson Sets Foot on a New Planet

  James Hutton Learns to Read the Hieroglyphics of the Earth

  Tony Blair’s Butterfly Effect

  The Kinder Artist

  Remembering a Good Friend

  A Gaitherin o Scottish Men

  My Grandfather Dreams Twice of Flanders

  Robert Burns’ First Poem for More Than 200 Years

  Prophet Peden Rattles the Prison Bars of the 21St Century

  Wilfred Owen Reads Between the Lines

  All That We Have

  MAGIC FOR ALL

  Trident Mantra

  A History of the Glass Kingdom

  The Composer’s Cat

  Darien II

  Our Plea to the Balmoral Clock

  Whatever Next?

  Wee Referendum Burd

  An Opera to Last a Lifetime

  How to Save the World

  Scottish Cat and Scottish Mouse

  God Gives the Universe a Second Shove

  Scottish Independence as Seen from above Edinburgh Castle

  Prayer

  Acknowledgements

  Grateful thanks are due to the editors of the following publications where some of the poems first appeared: The Stinging Fly (Eire), World Literature Today (USA), Herald, Scottish Review of Books, Gutter, Atlanta Review (USA), Perspectives, Scotsman, Neu! Reekie! #UntitledOne. Some were contained in Without a Backward Glance (Barzan Publishing) or broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and 5. Several of the poems have been jazzed up by Dick Lee for Edinburgh Science, Edinburgh Magic, A Very Edinburgh Celebration and Edinburgh Lily on the Edinburgh Fringe 2013-15. Also for The Games which was first performed by the jazz ensemble Dr Lee’s Prescription, at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games in 2014.

  The author appreciates the commissioning of some poems by the Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature, City of Edinburgh Council, Authors Reading Festival, Look Up Edinburgh (Freight Publications), Scottish Opera, Authors’ Licensing and Collection Society. In company with many other Scottish writers, he would like to acknowledge the unfailing kindness and support of the late Gavin Wallace.

  Ron Butlin would like to thank Creative Scotland for a Professional Development grant which allowed him to complete The Magicians of Scotland.

  Dedication

  To my wife Regi, Dick Lee and Anne Evans

  – magicians all!

  MAGIC PLACES

  Though brought up in a very small Borders village, I have lived mostly in cities here and abroad. Like much of modern life, my longing to return to village life is untested, and fairly suspect.

  The Electric City of Heck

  Cattle stumbling their way down to the shallows.

  The water’s coolness rising

  To meet them. Their hooves dry and hard

  Against a clatter of loose stones etc. …

  Having rusted not quite closed,

  The sluice gate’s cast-iron lip runs

  With several downward streaks

  Of wet sunlight etc. …

  Brushstrokes painted on a long-ago afternoon,

  And erased –

  The strands of current drift midstream,

  Their several interlocking patterns describe …

  Etc. etc. etc. …

  *

  Isn’t it time I trashed such childhood fancies?

  After all, I live in the electric city

  and the electric city lives in me.

&n
bsp; My pulse is the traffic’s stop-and-go.

  What I know of love and friendship

  naming the only streets I care for.

  So …?

  How come I keep helter-skeltering back to – where?

  And for what?

  To give the supermarket checkout,

  aisles and shelves a pastoral makeover –

  smothering them in flowers, weeds

  and a purple sway of willow herb?

  Scythe down a field of business magnates,

  bankers and politicians (row upon sleek row

  baled and stacked, ready

  to be recycled into something useful)?

  Hardly. And yet …

  Almost overnight, our city’s been digitised,

  uploaded to an encrypted site / its inhabitants

  given new user names,

  new passwords.

  Our histories deleted at a mouse-click

  everyone’s now making up the truth.

  Beneath a touchscreen sky of low-watt

  urban stars we continue our separate journeys

  from the very centre of the universe

  (where all our journeys start from, especially

  the most personal).

  We share nothing. The name for our loneliness

  is self. We live for moments of recognition,

  for brief communion.

  *

  Accelerating away from the Lockerbie bombing –

  Staying a decade and more clear of the Twin Towers –

  Keeping the next atrocity always

  a few days ahead –

  Gaza, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and all the rest

  are parked in a layby for the time being

  (with luck, a tow-truck might be

  on its way).

  Same road, same destination.

  Still en route to where we’re always making for –

  you, me and the memories we rely on

  like outdated maps …

  *

  Or else, should I return to that summer’s afternoon?

  Rebrand it: The Electric City of Heck.

  #solidground.

  Upgrade its farm and half-dozen cottages (built mostly

  from the rubble of nearby Lochmaben Castle).

  Reformat it for the 21st century into:

  • A glass cathedral that promises unlimited FaceTime between Man and his God of choice

  • A glacier’s permafrost to slow the seasons’ meltdown

  • An ocean, cleansed to offer us all a second chance

  Then, if all else fails –

  Taking the best of what we have and the best

  of what we are, let’s reconfigure:

  a streamlined rush of swifts that eat, sleep

  and mate on the wing,

  never touching the Earth from here

  to Africa.

  Not angels, but our guides into

  a trackless future –

  our guides, our inspiration.

  Skara Brae in Orkney is the oldest known settlement in Britain. A visit there can be a truly moving experience, especially if the weather is at its rawest. It was hidden under sand dunes until a storm cleared these away in 1850.

  Disposable Buildings Are Made For Disposable Lives

  It seems the likes of you and me will always fail

  to keep to IKEA’s clearly-arrowed pathways,

  ending up homeless among glassware,

  candles, pin boards, towels,

  closely-planted wardrobes.

  When we come to a lake of stranded beds,

  we know we’re lost. And so –

  it’s back to the kitchens that cannot cook,

  to the playrooms whose primary-coloured brightness

  hurts us with remembrance.

  Passing through unnoticed, we leave no trace.

  When did our weatherless, windowless,

  prefabricated hours become

  whole days, whole months,

  whole years?

  When did we mislay the lives we meant to lead?

  Settling, instead, for flat-packed dreams, for hopes

  more easily expressed as trends

  in bathroom furniture?

  *

  500 years before we built the Great Pyramid of Cheops,

  5,000 years before we built IKEA,

  Orkney men, women and children

  carried back-breaking weights

  of stone. They split them,

  trimmed them to exact size, chiselled

  to confirm a perfect fit,

  then placed them.

  The scouring wind showed where.

  Skara Brae, the Knap of Howar.

  *

  IKEA bricks and breeze blocks will soon

  come tumbling down. That deepest blue

  industrial-scale sheeting

  (what we’ve learned to call ‘sky’),

  will drift elsewhere.

  One day, our line of sight will clear.

  It always does. To show us:

  Winter 1850. Bay of Skaill.

  The worst storm in living memory –

  Arctic winds batter sea and shore, hacking

  at Orkney machair and dunes until

  the weighted veil of several

  thousand years’ sand is

  finally lifted …

  Revealing –

  This stone-slabbed dresser, this bed, this hearth.

  Eight dwellings in all, a network

  of connecting passages.

  This human warren.

  Home.

  I had the honour to be Edinburgh’s Makar / Poet Laureate from 2008-14. Sadly, all good things must come to an end.

  Edinburgh Doesn’t Scan That Easy

  Six years I tried to turn our city into rhyme –

  I listened to its heartbeat, pulse …

  and time after time after time

  my too-poetic stress was out of sync.

  Edinburgh doesn’t scan that easy. You think.

  You plan. Pen, paper, make a start –

  but our city’s all-too-wayward heart

  just batters on, no matter what you say.

  Thanks to high finance, the homeless in the malls,

  the pubs, drugs, the tourists, and festivals

  running night and day –

  our streets have learned to stray.

  Buildings never stay where they’ve been put,

  tram tracks come and go, ditto

  banks and parliaments. Consultants who compute

  our futures always get them wrong.

  And so …

  As one, the public clocks will whirr and chime,

  bursting into song!

  Rush-hour men and women heel-kick, dance –

  they finger-click the city beat,

  its commerce and romance

  from Leith to Arthur’s Seat!

  I stand on North Bridge gazing east and west –

  the distant Forth, the Gardens, galleries, the sky.

  A train comes rumbling out of Waverley …

  This I take on trust, and all the rest.

  *

  The laurel crown, the Council Makar cape and quill

  are each invisible,

  likewise the laureate whose term is done.

  Time to take my leave, time to hand them on …

  Leuchars railway station, on the line between Edinburgh and Dundee, is a place where time often seems to have stopped. Forever.

  Rehearsals for The End Of Time

  Room heaters switched off, and all lights.

  Doors locked, steel shutters pulled down,

  benches removed. Arctic winds and

  North Sea sleet scour every surface

  of its history.

  No pyramids, no Renaissance,

  no rise and fall of mighty empires –

  not now. Not ever.

  Only this battened-down brickwork. Only me

  going nowhere.

  I�
�m sure it was a summer’s day when I came across

  the metal footbridge. I remember sunlight.

  Mid-January now by the feel of it,

  and the clock’s hands stuck

  at a quarter-past ten …

  (Once upon a time I lived in the warm hills

  above Barcelona,

  I’d stroll each evening beneath shower upon

  shower of falling stars. So many wishes to make,

  so many lifetimes to look forward to …)

  These are Scottish stars hammered

  into east coast darkness,

  right up to the hilt.

  Bringing the Cosmic Wheel to a standstill.

  An RAF jet hangs silent and motionless 100ft or so

  above platform 2 –

  had it been planning to liberate someone,

  somewhere? Was it en route to yet another country

  to help them become

  just like us?

  No train in sight, nor hope of any.

  Rehearsals for the End of Time

  take place, it seems,

  here at Leuchars station.

  As a small boy, I was taken to see Edinburgh’s last tram trundle its final journey along Princes Street before being scrapped. The rails were tarmacked over. Less than fifty years later, the pollution and traffic jams had become so bad it was proposed to re-lay the tracks. These poems can be seen on the timetable for each stop.

  Stations of the Rush Hour

  YORK PLACE

  First stop on the line, or the last?

  Into the future, or out of the past?

  We get on, we get off – that’s all we can know

  for our journey started long, long ago.

  ST ANDREW ’S SQUARE

  Scotland, too, is a green island. Here

  we’re hemmed in by cliffs of sheerest glass

  and heavy-duty stonework.

  Time to make waves

  as we sail this Tarmac-Black Sea!

  PRINCES STREET

  WARNING – the budget allowed for one stop only

  along the entire length of our capital’s main street.

  Make the most of it!

  WEST END

  If there’s time before your tram, enjoy this pause

  in the city’s hustle-bustle, push-and-press.

  Let the sky, the trees and the pleasing

  curve of Atholl Crescent soothe

  your downtown stress …

  HAYMARKET

  Nearby, five roads meet and snarl and clash (traffic-tangles, red lights, criss-cross lanes and criss-cross drivers), while we go two-rail smoothly

  gliding past.

  MURR AYFIELD

  Even when the pitch and seats are empty,

  a hushed roar fills the stadium –

  Let’s hear it loud enough for Scotland!

  BALGREEN

  Beware that nearby block of bricked-up darkness,