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.
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