Vivienne Margaret Bateman Poems

I like a growling congregation,
hope creaking through difficult lives;
I like choirs of bright voices,
light filling dark places;
...

A pale-yellow leaf
turning on its twig and dropping,
growing smaller, flatter,
like your face today
...

The darling rabbits lie bashed on the road
in May-time's abundance of rabbits and cars,
wind courses through shining grasses,
yellow irises stand triumphant in ditches.
...

(For Colm at three years old)

You broke an Easter egg
I had kept since a child
as you danced round the fire bare-footed.
...

I looked at the old post-card,
the houses like a growth from the soil,
the peaks towering above them,
a sign of the majesty of God,
...

Often have I seen them come together,
two old friends, two crofters,
who after a brief murmured greeting
will stand wordlessly together,
...

The Highlands are not remote anymore,
with a powerful car you can reach the place in a day,
it is the bleakness of the coast
that wore the people down
...

I saw one of my poems translated
in a book of love poems from Scotland,
and it felt strange that an affair
that lasted only three weeks
...

In the grey of the dawn
you drink intently,
your eyes gaze ahead,
their brownness tells me nothing;
...