Hiraeth (pronounced [hiraɪ̯θ])

    by

   Jackie Kay

     My seventy-seven-year-old father

     put his reading glasses on

     to help my mother do the buttons

     on the back of her dress.

     ‘What a pair the two of us are!’

     my mother said, ‘Me with my sore wrist,

     you with your bad eyes, your soft thumbs!’

     And off they went, my two parents

     to march against the war in Iraq,

     him with his plastic hips. Her with her arthritis,

     to congregate at George Square, where the banners

     waved at each other like old friends, flapping,

     where they’d met for so many marches over their years,

     for peace on earth, for pity’s sake, for peace, for peace.

      Published in Life Mask (Bloodaxe, 2005)