Norman MacCaig wrote these lines 50 years ago after a visit to Amherst, Massachusetts, the hometown of that most original and enigmatic of American poets, Emily Dickinson. His own rather enigmatic piece is included in The Poems of Norman MacCaig, edited by his son Ewen (Polygon, £25 hardback).
INTRUSION
We sat by a Scottish stream
in Massachusetts.
A groundhog observed us,
its whiskered face peering
from a hole in the ground
like a cartoon from World War I
and through the still, bright air
flew birds whose names
I did not know.
~
Suddenly, in front of us,
thirty yards away,
a twenty foot limb
crashed from an elm tree.
~
Now, three weeks later,
in a Scottish house in Scotland,
I tell myself
it was one of a million
dramatic acts
in the world of nature’s
perpetually symbolic play
that, if we had not been there,
would have taken place anyway.
~
But it disturbs me. I try
to see it as no other than
the Scottish water crimpling away
through America and
the watchful face peering
from its dugout across
the No Man’s Land that lies
between me and everything.
May 1967
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