Poem of the week

Published on Friday 24 April 2009 14:49

The Release by Edwin Morgan

This poem by Scotland's National Poet takes us directly into that experience of clarity that comes when scaffolding is taken down, a feeling city dwellers will identify with. The Edwin Morgan Archive at the Scottish Poetry Library formally opens on 27 April, Morgan's birthday. It contains over 2,500 items, including A Book of Lives (Carcanet, 9.95) from which this poem is taken.

The scaffolding has gone. The sky is there!

hard cold high clear and blue.

Clanking poles and thudding planks were the music

of a strip-down that let light through

At last, hammered the cage door off its hinges,

banged its goodbye to the bantering dusty

brickie crew,

Left us this rosy cliff-face telling the tentative

sun it is almost as good as new.

So now that we are so scoured and open and clean,

what shall we do?

There is so much to say

And who can delay

When some are lost and some are seen, our dearest

heads, and to those and to these we must still

answer and be true.

September-November 2002

You can borrow items by Edwin Morgan from the Scottish Poetry Library, and view the Archive – it also lends by post. Tel: [phone], e-mail [e-mail] or visit www.spl.org.uk.