Tonight, folding away the newspaper in grim anticipation of the next two month's dull electioneering, and feeling diminished as yet another church 'ideas' meeting yields very little energy, I'm grateful for this poem from the excellently-conceived Without Day, a very lively book of people's proposals for a new Scottish parliament, published to pre-empt its opening in 2000. This is extract from Scottish Aeon by David Greenslade:
Qualification for standing for election for a seat in the New Scottish Parliament.
Grief and patience.
Having waited and endured the best men and women sail from Scottish harbours hacking their way into remote blood.
Grief and patience.
Parliament will sit only on those days, at those times when the ghost of a teenage girl drowned within sight of the rocks of Nova Scotia
Brushes the building with her shawl;
The rest of the time Parliament will be gone again, back under, dispersed into the working hands of farms and warehouses, shops and factories, streets and desks of the Scottish people.
john davies
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