STATUE
(i.m. Douglas Gifford)
Every person deserves to have a statue.
Not in the pompous poses waiting their turn
to be torn down by future angry ages,
but natural, relaxed, like Gaudí on his bench,
or Cervantes with his book. A figure
you would sit beside or share a sandwich with.
One such I see, not yet cast or placed within
its proper Scottish setting, only a dream.
Behind it rise the moors and hills, where Hogg and Scott
look on. The enigmatic Stones stand round.
The silver darlings of a northern sea flash
in the dawn. And the rose grows merry in time.
The statue, smiling and alert, discourses
to the Land and People about their treasures
held in books and poems and the scholar’s mind.
Would such a statue not deserve to last,
so much we learned from his abundant store,
that well he drew our native waters from?
Aye, man, if Dougie was here, he would tell you.
Alan MacGillivray
