DAVID Scott is a poet-cleric in a tradition stretching back to George Herbert and including the Welsh R S Thomas and Scottish Andrew Young (all of whose poems have appeared in this spot).
A former winner of the National Poetry Competition and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, he takes Scotland's missionary hero as his subject in this piece from Beyond the Drift, his New and Selected Poems (Bloodaxe, £12).
DAVID LIVINGSTONE ON THE EVE OF
DISCOVERING THE VICTORIA FALLS
The lamp picks out the flint-lock
a page of the Greek text of Luke,
his tin travelling-box, and his cap's red satin
upturned, holding open the notebook
at today's new words: thunder, smoke,
waiting, rainbow. On these nights of clear skies
he is grateful for his warm shirt,
its Scotch wool; at the end of the night,
this noise. The roar draws near.
The roar and the smoke have become familiar,
more thunderous: more like fire than water.
Another day will tell, another night,
what water burns, what fire ignites both rainbows.
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