photo by Daniel Battersby, pexels

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by J. W. Wood

The following extract is taken from J. W. Wood’s major long-form poem, The Emigrants Farewell. published in 2016 by The High Window and dedicated to Thomas and Sheena Smith,

A Scottish-Canadian poet, Wood is the author of the collection The Anvil’s Prayer (2013) and has found literary success on both sides of the Atlantic, with his work widely published in journals and even a shortlisted thriller written under a pseudonym. This particular poem represents the culmination of a deeply personal, decades-long project, initiated by a challenge from his former tutor, the Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, who tasked Wood with writing “the epic of his people.” The poem is written in ottave rima

The Emigrant’s Farewell

Bid adieu to your birthplace
when you step on board that plane.
Say goodbye to capitalism’s cradle
and nine centuries of dreams gone tame
in the face of ye cannae dae that,
dinnae get above yerself, disnae matter
and other self-negating patter. Lame
diversions from the truth can’t hide it,
separation will not end the shame

of too little for too many. It’s us
and no-one else we have to blame,
our churches and traditions, stuff
we brought to Canada with us, like
the steam engine. The TV. The first
country to offer free education,
sectarianism, domestic battery,
stabbings, hatreds and the poverty

that made Scotland great. Inside this red
leaf flag lies Scotland’s muscle,
the settlers time forgot washed
into history’s ice-storm, lost
like summer rain. Hobson’s choice
between snow and ice or turpitude:
the comfort of old rivalries, or something
still unseen on earth. Can countries

change without revolutions? They grow
or die but no-one cares unless
that change splurts across the pixels
of some blog-paper. The world
shifted when the banks went down
only to get propped up again; now
there are no mythical empires,
No Pax Britannia, Romanorum

or anything else. And freedom?
Just another name for no-one left to blame
as Dolly didn’t put it: the scalpel
of politricks their dominion. Better
to dig for metal beneath this cold
vastness, water and snow angled
at a haar sun, shrouding memories
of where we came from but not

the things we left undone. Let go:
melt into this country’s spring,
carve new cities from its plains,
forget what drove you here but not
the Gods that brought you safe
between this ice-flipped horizon
and the silent light above. Scots
wha’ hae (and those who didn’t)
turned earth and tempered steel

for the rails that built this place,
founded the banks and universities
then disappeared without a trace. Let
those who come now find their roots
not five thousand miles away but here,
where Scotland’s corpus lies dormant
in the interstices of those oblivious
to the past, maybe only where

their grandparents sailed from. Cobalt
eyes, ember hair and lily skin
the only clues, ones that soon will blur
into history and thank God, in truth. Yet Alba
will remain here, gu brath no more
but the mud on which immigrants rest
their cornerstones. Language and history,
poutine and whisky all concur:

Canada’s past and Scotland’s future
merge and mean less and more
as time passes, things fade, lives
get forgotten for convenience
and a new culture brews. Though
Scotland slips from view as we fight
to knit this lingual purl together
and mass Canada in song,

remember how much is due
to those who left a high-hard place
and sailed to this unpromised land,
made a nation out of delving
praying, scraping, killing, skinning
drinking and distilling. Their fame
has died though they live on
in the streets and cities of this place;

may it always be so, even as the sun
slips lower on where they ran from
to rise in the East. Always remember
freedom’s keen in a mountain wind;
how hard your people battled
to stop here, through the waves
and sickness they left behind,
whether of body or mind. Our chains

may first seem blessing, the easy way,
a hymn to diversity. Break those chains:
remember your past. Remember
their names, those old songs taught
to cheer us, or perhaps just
make us cry. Are nations eternal

or a phase we’re shuffling through? Will
later generations see spilt blood
as the war-gilt of heroes, or pointless
heroism? Nothing new under the sun
and least of all answers. History
does not rhyme, though its metre
may feel inevitable, immutable
like some psychic selfie of a people
and their culture. To the church
that is this nation, let the lakes

and mountains be the steeple,
the forest its pews. Subsume
your old ways in this place,
find new customs, start other
traditions that blend North
with South, East with West:
an eagle dips its wing.

Nature will not rest

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J. W. Wood is the author of five books of poems, a novel and a collection of short fiction published with AN Editions. His work has appeared in The Poetry Review, London Magazine, TLS, etc., and has been shortlisted or nominated for several awards, including the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry and the Bridport Prize. A dual citizen of the UK and Canada, he is the recipient of awards from the Canada Council for the Arts and the British Columbia Arts Council.