Write: Poems by Dave Renton

Published by Hegemon Press, 2002. £3. ISBN 0-953098-4-6. Email hegemonpress@hotmail.com for postage rates.

Write

If I don't write
Then I am a poet without words
Something wrong
A man walking home broken
Even less than a prophet
Without country.

But if I do write,
And in my own words,
Then what am I?

Islanders

I was asked if we had Islanders
Old men who plucked and stored
Single flakes of warm white snow
Tall women backs unladen
Red-faced tall free and proud.
Did we eat and drink like Tsars?
And sleep too as warm?
Were we free and kind?
Did we see fair Justice done?

I said that I knew Islanders
Now cold
But in their hopes and hearts
Those very seas and darting fires
Love without concrete
Hopes undulled
And legends for the poets still.