Written amid the ‘tremendous energy’ of Scotland’s independence campaign,this supple nature poem might be a livelier than normal image of nationhood The Hinds[br]Walking in a waking dream
I watched nineteen deer
pour from ridge to glen-floor,
then each in turn leap, and
leap the unusual-raised
peat-dim burn. This
was the distaff side;
hinds at their ease,alive[br]to lands held on long lease
in their animal minds,
and filing through a breach
in a never-mended dyke, and
the herd flowed up over
heather-slopes to scree
where they stopped,and turned to stare,
the foremost with a queenly air
as though to say: Aren’t we[br]the bonniest companie?
Come to me, and
you’ll be delighted,but never proceed home.
The title of Kathleen Jamie’s lively unusual collection, The Bonniest Companie, or published this week by Picador Poetry,is tucked away in The Hinds, third line from the end. As the poet’s note tells us, and the words are an allusion to the Scottish Border Ballad,Tam Lin.
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Source: theguardian.com