a transcription of the poem read on the home page of this issue

by Shara McCallum

May 2018: to Robert Burns, after Calum Colvin’s “Portrait of Hugh MacDiarmid”

You saturate the sight
of those who come after, poets
and painters alike. Your words invade
my mind’s listening, manacle
my tongue when I try to speak
on all I backward cast my eye
and fear and canna see.
Who would I have been
to you, what stone
in the ruined house of the past?
In this world, I am unloosed, belonging
to no country, no tribe, no clan.
Not African. Not Scotland.
And you, voice that stalks
my waking and dreaming,
you more myth than man,
cannot unmake history.
So why am I here
resurrecting you to speak
when your silence gulfs centuries?
Why do I find myself
on your doorstep, knocking,
when I know the dead
will never answer?

Poem copyright 2021 by Shara McCallum. All rights reserved.

See more poems from Shara McCallum on The Fight & The Fiddle: “Outside the Frame,”  and  “Passage”

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Read more in this issue: Interview | Critical Essay | Writing Prompt