A second sample from I’m Coming With You (£8), Scottish PEN’s new anthology of poetry and prose drawn from its online magazine in celebration of the organisation’s ninetieth birthday.

The book’s material reflects a wide range of cultural backgrounds, language, and country. Catherine Czerkawska is an award-winning writer of novels, stories, and plays, as well as poetry.

            ALIENS

I am small in springtime

on my father’s shoulders.

I can see everything even the

bald patches on the

heads of passing men,

a precarious and thrilling position.

~

My father’s hair is coal black and curly,

Polish hair as foreign as he is.

The word refugee is as familiar

to me as my own name.

I hold his ears for balance,

while he trots with me aloft.

~

My father’s papers proclaim him alien

which makes me half alien too.

Poland might as well be Pluto but

the iron curtain is real.

I see it sweeping across Europe

made of polished metal,

dividing kin from kin,

as unfathomable as space.

~

Small and safe on his shoulders

his hands steadying me,

I grip his ears and laugh.

We are what we will always be

to one another:

complicit and loving

alien invaders of

a mystifying new world.