SIXTEEN OCCASIONAL POEMS
1990–2000
15 – ALBA
Poem: Alasdair Gray © 2005
The grand archipelago of Gaeldom
dwindled to pictland, to Scotland,
to this distraught lady
rushing from wall to wall
clutching a broken thistle.
Southward a walled-in queen
opens herself to the past and
a head man’s
block.