The Sunday Post

I sit with my back  to the engine, watching
the landscape pouring away out of my eyes.
I think I know where I am going and have
some choice in the matter.

I think too, that this was a country
of bog-trotters, moss troopers,
fired ricks and roof-trees in the black night, glinting
on tossed horns and red blades.
I think of lives
bubbling into the harsh grass.

What difference now?
I sit with my back to the future, watching
time pouring away into the past. I sit, helplessly
lugged backwards
through the Debatable Lands of history, listening
to the execrations, the scattered cries, the
falling of roof-trees
in the lamentable dark.

'Crossing The Border'
By Norman MacCaig.