THIS reflection on the student town of St Andrews comes from Lindy Barbour's new pamphlet, Where You Start From (Mariscat Press, £6).

Most of the Orkney-born author's poems describe, vividly, her childhood and growing up in north-east Fife in a more industrialised environment. She currently teaches counselling and psychotherapy at Edinburgh University.

THE HAUNTED TOWN

St Andrews by the Northern sea, a haunted

town it is to me - Andrew Lang

Awareness of time arrived as sunset flamed

the broken towers at the edge of the grey North Sea.

Time haunted the wreck of the huge cathedral

and glowed in the bones of the saint.

Time carried on voices talking of their youth

in this town, the years of happiness

of drinking, dancing, lipstick, nylons, sex -

a dress of turquoise taffeta with sweetheart neckline.

So memories were laid like blazing gilded stones

across the open doorway of a mind and formed it

to pre-emptive elegy, to grieving before living

to travelling the green way of pilgrimage

while history was elsewhere, a dream

of always and never coming back.