This is the late Tessa Ransford’s thought-provoking contribution to Scottish PEN’s new anthology of prose and poetry, I’m Coming With You (£8), marking its ninetieth anniversary, with material drawn from its online magazine, PENnings, and reflecting on “places, journeys, people, home and exile, and most powerfully on freedoms found through writing and reading.”
THE REBEL
In the name of study
and for the sake of knowledge
we encourage children
to press flowers
pin butterflies.
~
In the name of study
and for the sake of knowledge
brilliant scientists
experiment with animals
pin-point the stuff of life.
~
‘How dare you press a snowdrop,
a living thing?’
wept the child, little knowing
how soon she would herself be pressed
in the hard-backed pages
of Education.
~
But when I observe
how much wire
and what miles or iron and steel
are required
to pin down the human spirit
and that it still flowers -
~
I take hope
and move paper wings
open desiccated petals
in the love released
by this tiny rebel.
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