This is not only festival time in Edinburgh but the season for Highland games. Norman MacCaig is a reflective bystander at one of these northern festivities in this week's poem. It comes from the comprehensive volume of his work, from 1947 to 1992, edited by his son Ewen and published by Polygon.

 

HIGHLAND GAMES

They sit on the heather slopes

and stand six deep round the rope ring.

Keepers and shepherds in their best plus-fours

who live mountains apart

exchange gossip and tall stories.

women hand out sandwiches,

rock prams and exchange

small stories and gossip.

The Chieftain leans his English accent

on a five-foot crook and feels

one of the natives.

 

The rope ring is full 

of strenuous metaphors.

Eight runners shoulder each other

eight times round it - a mile

against the clock that will kill them.

 

Little girls breasted only with medals translate

a tune that will outlast them

with formalised legs and

antler arms. High jumpers 

come down to earth and,

in the centre

a waddling 'heavy' tries to throw

the tree of life in one straight line.

 

Thank God for the bar, thank God

for the Games Night Dance - even though they end

in the long walk home

with people no longer here - with exiles and deaths - 

your nearest companions.