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.