New Collected Poems

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Poem of the Week

The late Ian Crichton Smith was brought up in Lewis in the Outer Hebrides and his 1984 collection 'The Exhiles' draws poignantly on the area's history of emigration. The little piece below deals not in the generalities of loss, and sometimes the impossibility of return, but tells a very particular story - and is all the more powerful for that. It can be found in Ian Crichton Smith: New Collected Poems, an updated and splendidly comprehensive compendium devoted to this most sympathetic and generous-spirited of modern Scottish poets.

Returning Exhile

You who come home do not tell me

anything about yourself, where you have come from,

why your coat is wet, why there is grass in your hair.

The sheep huddle on the hills as always,

there's a yellow light as if cast by helmets,

the fences made of wire are strung by the wind.

Do not tell me where you have come from, beloved stranger.

It is enough that there is light still in your eyes,

that the dog rising on his pillar of black knows you. I hope the publication of Ian Crichton Smith's New Collected Poems, as bounteous and loving as they are musically haunting and lyrically graceful, signals a resurgence of interest in this exhilarating and visionary poet.