Scotland's Saint
By Glenn Telfer
()
About this ebook
Poems inspired by Saint Columba’s on-going mission to Scotland.
A light-hearted, but erudite and faithful collection of poems exploring Scotland’s Christian heritage through the life of its most famous saint, Saint Columba. Other saints, Ninian and Mungo, turn up too as the collection moves between the heroic age of Scottish Christianity and our own time.
The saint’s return is long overdue, no-one’s listening anymore to the message.
Except, maybe, you.
Glenn Telfer
I am now almost fully grown, being born in 1956 in working-class Glasgow, Scotland (from Kinning Park, Dennistoun and Ibrox, if you’re asking). The hammer and tongs, coal-powered world I grew up in is as gone as Troy, and with it the industrial working class that served it. What seemed so solid and forever, disappeared almost overnight and is rapidly becoming unknowable except through people like me. The hasty departure of a way of life and its replacement by globalized uncertainty is both the background to my life and the raw material of my art. Considering what’s gone, what’s here, what’s yet to come is what I’m about; itemising the bill of life through my writing. Other poets have explored this too, but none are as like the poet as he is himself. This is my special qualification. Imagine being able to write a book? Even when I was a wee boy throwing stones and playing street football I wanted to be a writer. And all the while I thought I was living my life backwards and sideways I was actually tracing a Celtic knotwork to here. Whatever the reason for this want, this writing may be the cure. May be is also maybe not.
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Book preview
Scotland's Saint - Glenn Telfer
AT GLENCOLMCILLE
a sight to make a stone weep
and may yet.
Faded pictures, Christening cups,
bangles and ribbons, wind-lashed
teddy,a wee red toy car
children’s play things spoilt
and scattered by a clumsy hand.
Memories of a heart-ache
that filled the frame to bursting
and was only salved by being
battered into unconsciousness
by the drink or madness
but, although fading to their
earthly nothings in the relentless
Atlantic weather,
these pathetic tokens of
a sad and Oh so little mortal life
are mere cyphers for a power
that dwarfs the vastness
of the pain and bathes
that crucifying world in
Warm Golden Light.
They are not forgotten
and never will be
even when the carriers
of the burden let it go
for the last time
which is why they are here
for Columba to hold them
safe in his arms forever
a guarantee from ancient days
that means what it says;
Take my hand and trust me.
We have friends along the road
who want to meet you.
THE MESSAGE
Once forgetting who he worked for
Columba found out the hard way
not to cross his employer’s plans
for Scotland.
He found out too that
beautiful accommodates ruthless
the angel appearing not as
the expected cherub but
an SS Sturmscharführer with Iron Cross
and Gold Oak Leaves
an angelic enforcer who