Peter MacKay
الغيلية الأسكتلندية
The Leak
There must have been a leak for days,
from the loose slates of the upstairs flat
into our box room ceiling
before the silence of wood and water
broke its seal and water dripped then streamed
in the bent of its nature,
taking genuine liberties as it passed
through the nails & tins of paint & Hoovers:
bric-a-brac turned into a public road
of dissolved varnish with its fingerprints
corresponding down plywood walls.
It is Christmas, though, and the leak
will not be fixed for days. Till then time
is measured in buckets and stains,
the exposure of the tacky innerworkings
of plywood walls, the profits
that can be derived from nature,
and a constant drip drip into and through our lives.
It is almost as if we cannot live now
in silence as before,
as if we are only what we leak,
and distrust the pristine transparency
of what we speak.
من: unpublished
الإنتاج المسموع: Literaturwerkstatt Berlin, 2014
An t-Aoidean
Feumaidh gun robh aoidean ann son grèis
o sglèatan sgaoilte an fhlat shuas staidhre
gu siomal ar phreas, mus bhrios
cèir tost fiodh agus uisge
agus thòisich a’ bhùrn a’ sileadh agus a’ sruth
in the bent of its nature,
a’ smeacharanachd air na tarragan,
na tionaichean-peanta, na Hoovers:
a public road of bhàirnis leaghta
air a dhèanamh à bric-a-brac agus tiùrr
le meuran-lorg co-fhreagrach air ballaichean plywood.
’S e là na Nollaig a th’ann, ge-tà,
agus cha theid a charadh airson dreis.
Gus an uairsin tha sinn a’ tomhais tìd’
ann am peilichean agus smail,
ann an taisbeanadh mionach ruadh
bhallachan agus fiodh, am prothaid
a gabhas a dhèanamh à nàdair,
agus brag brag an t-uisge
a-steach ’s a-mach às ar beathan.
Cha mhòr gun urrainn dhuinn bhith beò, tèarainte
in silence as before,
gu bheil sinn a-nis dìreach na tha sinn ag aoidean,
nach urrainn dhuinn earbsa a chur
ann am fìor-ghloine ar cainnte.