Stitched Up : A Thread Through Time

Dumfries, Scotland : It's Inherent social injustice, psychogeography and very real need for Divine Intervention. Where does Dumfries sit in the multiverse?

 I see everything that has ever happened here since time began.  Hear every coo, cry and clamour resound through the ages. Feel everything : All your mortal emotions’ both joyous and grave... On a covert street-level manoeuvre, I descend through the dusk onto Pilgrims Way and traverse the old ford on the Nith toward Dumfries. I look across the water, smile wryly at my image glaring back at me before salty, southerly winds slash my earthly senses. I reach the banking where I shudder as I hear your call to arms.  I plough the asphalt of Nith Place to uncover this ‘Lore Burne’ where  bold, able men and  women rally to defend your weary-weathered burgh walls. Steadfast, staunch and toothy amidst the apathy of the pedestrians I walk amongst furtively.  If the world can turn on a sixpence your lifetime could turn depending on which bridge you take home. In these estates and schemes there's a once fervent youth  unwittingly subscribed to a drama of subdued ghettoization. Indolence and resignation  clashes with your inherent pride and resilience. Hypnotised by the rise and slosh of the Nith, I avoid the gaze of whoever’s path I cross as I obey the tide and head North. I am stricken, tonight,  by this town’s deafening silence………

 

I am beguiled by the half-moons of Devorgilla’s Auld Brig casting feathers  of light across the Nith’s blue steel. Six celestial portals or hellish chasms depending on which side of the river is to your advantage. Two loafers share a bench and a bottle at the Sandy Opening. They revel in the dark. Numbing their pain in tandem. Savouring the sanguine smoke of scavenged cigarettes : oblivious to the sizzling crackle of flame and flesh. Pleasure and punishment sit side by side where innocent, sage healers were choked and put to the stake. Their limp impotent mouths gutter  pitch and tar in perpetuity. The faces in attendance of this burning, livid and  luminous with approval, are licked and caressed by the  fire and brimstone of Presbyterianism. Daughters and sisters scapegoated to death by men of the cloth in accordance with dogma. I walk on by…….in reverence…...

The Tourist Information plugs a gap in a shy thoroughfare’s once proud smile. I see Broken faces on board the 920 for London and the same faces beaming on the 920 for Belfast, leaping from the coach like salmon into one of the Whitesands few remaining  hostelries. Yet another generation’s secrets and indiscretions are  written on it’s walls. People have always been pulled here by the anonymity proffered by Nithsdale’s haunts and shadows. A gravitational pull that even your bypass won't break. I am pulled left to where the ebb of the  tide is barred by the Caul and I stand captivated by the elegant, uplit Observatory. Such refinement! A cultivated lot aren’t you? The traces of the Auld Brig’s three destroyed arches emerge like fractals. Stitches of light thread through the jet black of infinity. I see  Traders and Pilgrims pay the toll to cross I'mDevorgilla’s earlier wooden bridge. The Alms  being received by the Mendicant  Greyfriars begging  to live and living to preach. I smell the fruits of their labour lifted on a summer breeze, willed by honeybees and melodies of birds perched in their walled orchard trees.   I am summoned by the ghostly French and Italian chants lilting down The Friars Vennel beyond the abandoned markets and spectres of cattle herded by cars parked on reclaimed land.  ‘Nae man can tether time nor tide’, however and the downstream pushes to remind you of the folly of man’s will versus nature's might. The Nith bursts her banks and  I am pushed right  onto Bank Street and into safety…….

Such sober austerity in these buildings! Once great vaults of wealth lamenting the last flight of capital. The City of Dumfries : still has a good  ring to it, doesn’t it? The sweet strain of a fiddle bowed by work-heavy arms  courses from ‘The Sang Hoose of Scotland’ and I wonder…... what if Burns had lived today? Imagine Wordsworth, Coleridge and Blake  all hooked up with him on Facebook! Held court in The Globe of a Friday evening? The first bastion of the International Romantic Movement!  The poised and aloof Midsteeple chimes  ‘Auld Lang Syne’ like a fanfare as I'm hunted onto the High Street by  this tormenting  flood. I am arrested by the vegetation sprouting from  perfect rooftops over ruined shopfronts. I see a mob at The Merkat Cross. They burn the articles of Union of 1707 and I  laugh at the  irony of the Unionist majority Dumfries is known for today…..Did you not know there’s a rebel spirit percolating through the generations and sleep-staggering in the schemes?! The blushing glow of hand-painted signs point to the future - somewhere even I can’t tread! Will the  High Street be reclaimed by the people as the Whitesands is by the tide?  My image glares back at me again as I begin my ascent on my way back home. I am St Michael. Patron saint of the warriors  and the sick alike. Your patron Saint, Dumfries! Your heart still beats under your cobble-stoned breast, so do  I really need to intervene here? Well .. that's up to you! But…. if  Paradise HAS been lost then surely Utopia is in the post. We’ll see…...

Reviews

[Eilis]

This is a powerful poem. It reads like a manifesto of sorts. I was hearing, at times, the ghost of James Joyce—that inherent sense of injustice but also a realization that a man is like a star. Meaning—he can be merely a speck viewed from afar or powerful enough to explode and shake the heavens. There is a lot encompassed here and I really appreciated the face you gave to your town. It’s beautiful but bleeding on the ground and you see it but feel helpless to intervene. And so many walk by laughing and oblivious. Or that was my feeling.

The sharp separation of the bridge between two worlds is indicative of the sharp divides we so often witness. The thin thread that rests between one world and another and the strange force that keeps these two worlds apart. I do think about the what ifs of bringing the old days forward. The collaborative spirit of the past that has a different force and spirit today. Social media brings together and pulls apart simultaneously. It certainly deadens the real-life resolve at times. What would Burns be in the modern day. The unanswerable questions provide fruit to fuel the writing continuously.

You ask a lot of questions here and worthy ones. But you also paint a grand, trembling town that needs to been seen beyond the snow globe of itself. Everything is seemingly both microcosm and explosive potential. I really enjoyed this. Could say a lot more but will leave it there.

[Davey Payne]

I love how Joyce tackled social hypocrisy and decried social injustice. His social suicide and disdain for the Dublin elite. A parallel he held with Burns. An indignant fellow. Thanks so much for reading Eilis and for taking the time to critique so thoroughly. It is thoroughly appreciated and I'm so glad you enjoyed it I am very proud of the finished article and of our wee town here in Scotland

[gram linski]

man, Davey I f*****g love this, I've walked those streets and felt the vibe and the sense of the town centre dying, but the history behind the broken facades not many of the locals actually know, great poem dude,

[Davey Payne]

Grateful for praise from a fellow Doonhamer - I'm so chuffed you like it Gram. Cheers mucker!