ALASTAIR Reid's acerbic perspective on the mindset of his countrymen and women (from Weathering, Canongate, 1978) has become a modern classic.

As well as a poet, Wigtownshire-born Reid is a distinguished translator, traveller, and frequent contributor to the New Yorker magazine.

SCOTLAND

It was a day peculiar to this piece of the planet,

when larks rose on long thin strings of singing

and the air shifted with the shimmer of actual angels.

Greenness entered the body. The grasses

shivered with presences, and sunlight

stayed like a halo on hair and heather and hills.

Walking into town, I saw, in a radiant raincoat,

the woman from the fish-shop. 'What a day it is!'

cried I, like a sunstruck madman.

And what did she have to say for it?

Her brow grew bleak, her ancestors raged in their graves

as she spoke with their ancient misery:

'We'll pay for it, we'll pay for it, we'll pay for it!'