Iain Crichton Smith

Old Woman



Your thorned back

heavily under the creel

you steadily stamped the rising daffodil.



Your set mouth

forgives no-one, not even God’s justice

perpetually drowning law with grace.



Your cold eyes

watched your drunken husband come

unsteadily from Sodom home.



Your grained hands

dandled full and sinful cradles.

You built for your children stone walls.



Your yellow hair

burned slowly in a scarf of grey

wildly falling like mountain spray.



Finally you’re alone

among the unforgiving brass,

the slow silences, the sinful glass.



Who never learned,

not even ageing, to forgive

our poor journey and our common grave,



while the free daffodils

wave in the valleys and on the hills

the deer look down with their instinctive skills,



and the huge sea

in which your brothers drowned sings slow

over the headland and the peevish crow.

Les premières phrases : Elle s'appelait Mrs Scott. C'était une vieille femme d'environ soixante-dix ans. Assise sur une vieille chaise devant sa maison, elle vit le cavalier s'approcher. Le cavalier s'appelait Patrick Sellar.