Issue 26: Bruach Mhor

Uncle Robert Waterhouse
aged 57 in 1913

hung himself on Hope Street.

  From a beam in the wash house.  


‘Not up to it’, he said. 

  couldn't hew coal anymore:


couldn't plod through dim miles,

  sweat naked next to black walls-- 


all for next to nothing.

  Next: nothing.


Some historian called 1913

  ‘The Last of Eden’.

The End of Catchean,
the Commons 


The Duke broke the township into crofts.

Subtler means after that.

If a widow had no adult son,

everyone was out.


   Here is ruin no.1.


Disease carrying animals appeared,

nudging against the livestock.

No one knew how,

everyone knew how.


   Here is ruin no.2


If you didn't improve the land,

everyone was out. 

If you did improve the land,

rent doubled. 


    Here is ruin no.3

    and two drainage ditches.

Bruach Mhor lives/loves by a loch. His poems have appeared in such places as The Interpreter's House, The Journal, Dreich, Broken Spine, Ink+Sweat+Tears, Morphrog, The Lake.


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