i SOURCE

Daer Hass, a seepage

swollen by lispings

in peat and tussock:

from mossy outcrops

cascade sibilances

pure as bell-notes;

purled stone-slap

and hollow water-clop

adding to a vocabulary

refined over millennia;

a thesaurus of cadences

and assonances embracing

diminutive mill-race,

glutinous glottal-stop.

ii UPSTREAM

Clydes Burn, Daer, Potrail,

true source in dispute;

Elvan, Midlock, Wandel

adding their tribute . . .

Forces thus joined,

we'll stick together

all the year round,

best and worst of weather.

Over sand and gravel,

skirting mill and quarry,

for us it's downhill

all the way to the sea.

iii FIRST LIGHT

Near Nunnerie, where Daer and Potrail meet,

highstepping it through early morning mist:

a troupe of llamas; one brown, four white,

their heads-erect posture midway between

goat and camel, last thing we dreamt we'd see.

Approaching the bank, they stop in unison

and stand motionless, maybe in contemplation

of their near perfect reflections, or simply

for a good nostrilful of us, then move on;

all but the largest, who gazes quizzically

as if asking, ''Do you fear we don't exist,

other than as some mutation of the spirit

of the place? Have it as you please''.

Dismissing such philosophical fripperies

he turns and splashes through a hoop of light.

iv TINTO IN WINTER

Approaching from Wolfclyde Motte,

cross Thankerton Bridge, keep to

the red scree track past the site

of the fort, skirt Totherin Hill

and blattered by sleet, complete

the short last lap: turtleback Tinto,

its Bronze Age cairn, orientation plate

and stone circle in which to shelter.

Like as not, to be hailed by an old boy

clutching a battered Thermos, able

to reel off the names of the encircling hills --

Ochils to Scald Law; due west, Goat Fell.

Asked whether Arran, in clear weather,

really is visible from here, he'll retort,

''I've been coming yince a month for years:

aw I can say is, I've no seen it yet.''

v VOICES

These rounded-up Kirkhope shearlings,

impervious to our amateur tup-glowering,

have been dipped a warm caramel-brown

so their black and white faces are best shown.

Drawn to Lanark Sheep Sale next day

I relish the voices round me, variations

within constancies of accent and speech-pattern

rich as clotted cream. As such jealously

to be guarded, not discarded by some jejune

education secretary or other pedant:

such undermining of tradition

and identity, part of a wider impoverishment.

vi WAR MEMORIAL

She lives not far from the War Memorial.

Two boys running past, kicking a ball,

spark off memories; how going to school

her brother hid his boots in a hedge for fear

his classmates would resent a wealth not theirs,

and punch it out of him. And how years later,

his personal diary became hers,

as next of kin; among its entries,

''One sign things are getting serious,

platoon football put under lock and key'';

and ''Today found my boots missing, lucky

to obtain another pair, in the vicinity . . . ''.

Between, the telegram: the realisation

it was all over; that they'd never again

cartwheel in the spray of Corra Lynn.

vii NEW LANARK

Approaching from above enables us to look down

on this marriage of energy and Socialist vision:

former counting-house, homes for mill-workers,

the Institute for the Formation of Character,

New Buildings topped by their bell-lantern.

Today the gravel court and mill-lade totally

overrun by school parties, spilling like confetti

from the cafe, seeking the ''stairheid cludgie'' --

unlike Owen's girl dancers circling in the hall,

white-clad, animal posters above them on the wall.

So visitors from Salem, Ohio to Newry, Co. Down

embark, to a taped background of Scottish reels,

on the new, spellbinding Annie McLeod Experience:

through lasers and holograms, back to the 1820s;

one Age's Utopia, another's Tourist Trail.

viii ORCHARD COUNTRY

Far from French groves, all gnarl and sun-glow,

Crossford's clay haughs none the less thrive;

swagged branches bearing not grape or olive

but a more northerly fruit, whose bloom no-one

expects will take the light like a model's skin.

Abundance lessening, still set in due season

not under the azures of the Glasgow Boys'

southern travels, but the no-nonsense skies

they left and returned to: whites and greys

in gurly cloud-clusters, unkempt tresses . . .

ix CONTRASTS

A reverberant monument to pomposity and pride,

Hamilton mausoleum housed the sarcophagus

El Magnifico saw as his last resting-place:

despite their chiselling Egyptian basalt out,

for his insertion, sledge-hammers needed.

On the skyline, the pink pavilion-towers

of Chatelherault, the ducal ''Dogg Kennells'';

Adam's charred interiors ornately restored,

combination of parterre and Cadzow cattle

contributing to the air of a film set.

From such lavishness, we leave the main road

at a sign (easy to miss) pointing the way

to a small church, its loft and spire simple;

a neat row of weavers' cottages opposite.

Dalserf's passenger ferry long-since obsolete

we sit as though marooned, history's shadows

sifting and lengthening; looked down on

by an obelisk to ''the Rev. John McMillan,

Covenanter of Covenanters''; an eleventh-century

hogback gravestone adding its memento mori.

x FROM THE AIR

Brochures offer trips, no effort spared,

by Hot Air Balloon, over the Clyde Valley;

sustaining basketry, the roar generated,

enabling you to look down on the vastly

variegated patchwork below, and see

glinting in watery sunlight the glasshouses

of a dwindling economy, orchards under

threat; beyond, the unprettified mass

of derelict steelworks, abandoned pits,

alongside the scars of opencast; and wonder

as the remnants queue up for benefit

or redundancy, or cough fluid from lungs

rotted by silicosis, how soon fibreglass

shafts and slagheaps will emerge complete

with a reconstructed workforce of miners

and smelters, once backbone and sinew

of this Central Belt. The last straw

in usurping sacrifice: some future balloon

expending its hot air over a giant Lanark

Industrial Disney-Land and Theme Park . . .

xi DISCLOSURES

Hard to detect at ground level

what aerial shots can reveal

of Neolithic and Iron Ages;

Rome's imperial rule.

Road, rampart, and keep;

fort and souterrain, to repel.

Pict and Scot: barmkin wall;

a legacy of influx, bloodied soil.

Derivations from Celtic and Saxon,

interknit. Where today, cheek by jowl,

thrive harmoniously Ristorante

Italiano, Star of India, Dragon Pearl.

xii ENVOI

Howking out rocks for a new generator,

an earthmover muddies the water at Blantyre weir.

Alongside, a fish-ladder. The flow cleared,

will the damage outweigh benefit to Nature --

or salmon reappear, thrusting upriver,

where none was seen for 60 years or more?

A stroll away, the ruins of Bothwell Castle

on their greensward peninsula, walls

coalescing in sunshine with the browns

and russets of autumn beeches, demolition

and reconstruction a test of fortitude;

its donjon a bulwark to the Upper Clyde.