a first storm

wind beneath the door
its linoleum rattle
like a dying bird
on the lobby stairs

for the winter of 1953 is not much remembered
nor its broken glass in the small hours
nor the pub sign splinters the morning after
the McEwan’s cavalier in shattered coloured pieces

in those early days
life was nothing
but playful moments
and threadbare rugs

sometimes I’d sit in the empty bar
where old Geordie let the pipe-smoke
curl around his mouth

a train awa in a tunnel he said
and sang to an old Scots tune

the black cat poopit
in the white cat’s face…
the white cat said Goad blin me

the black cat poopit
in the white cat’s face…
and the black cat said
ye shouldna hae stood ahin me

the smoke went up beside his eyes
where he kept his laughter

and he uncapped a bottle of what
he said was beer but wasn’t

which I drank on the counter
because I was three and in my place

I was a child
I was innocent

and besides
the rain was leaving
with the wind falling light
under a half-hearted grey sky

© BH, 2022

---

Another childhood memory. This is a companion version in English, a transliteration, if you will. Both were written side by side. Neither is a direct translation of the other.

This revives two memories at once, the storm of 1953 and my recollections from before I was four and lived above the Rocksley Inn in Stirling Village, near Peterhead. The proprietor was Gorge Third, the afore-mentioned…