AUDIO READING FROM THE COLLECTION: EXILE

Selected poems offers a generous selection of Donaldson’s work to date. It is an ideal place for the reader to engage with the themes of her work: the natural world, human sexuality, and the often unexpected ways in which people’s live interlink. Drawing inspiration from historical figures, friends and chance acquaintances alike, Moyra Donaldson looks at the world with a fresh unflinching eye. A remarkable achievement from a poet at the height of her powers.

Exile

What ground is mine

if I would govern myself?

Where is my country

if neither bogs nor gantries

speak of me?

Where can I stand

if I am not one thing

or the other?

My grandfather knew where he stood.

Ancestors planted his feet

in fertile soil, green futures were

named in his name, possessed.

He preached their flinty faith

in mission tents, visions of eternal life

on soft Ulster evenings,

but there was no redemption.

Not in the land. Or through the Blood.

Not in the hard lessons of duty, obedience,

with which he marked his children.

He is stripped of virtue,

his legacy a stone

of no magic, no transcendence.

No children ever turn to swans,

wafer remains wafer on the tongue,

and flesh is always flesh.

My two white birds will bring me

water from the mountains,

beakfuls of sweet sips.

I will grow a new tongue,

paint my body with circles

and symbols of strength, mark myself

as one who belongs in the desert.