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