One of the abiding themes of Scotland’s history is the experience of exile through emigration.

Some of Iain Crichton Smith’s most poignant writing deals with the Clearances that banished people to North America.

Here are two extracts from a poem which considers the subject in an antipodean context, describing how the exiles surrender themselves emotionally to the new country.

The piece comes from Crichton Smith’s New Collected Poems (Carcanet, £18.95, paperback)..

                    AUSTRALIA

                                1

In Australia the trees are deathly white,

the kangaroos are leaping halfway to heaven

but land at last easily on the earth.

Sometimes I hear graves singing

their Gaelic songs to the dingos

which scrabble furiously at the clay.

Then tenderly in white they come towards me,

drifting in white, the far exiles

buried in the heart of brown deserts.

It is a strange language they speak

not Australian but Gaelic

while the green eyes stalk them

under a moon the same as ours,

but different, different.

                              3

No, you will not return from Australia

However you may wish to do so.

For you have surrender to its legend,

to its music being constantly reborn,

to the eerie whine of its deserts.

Somehow or another it entered your soul

And however much you remember Scotland,

its graves sanctified by God,

its historical darknesses,

you will not return from it.

Its dust is in your nostril

its tenderness has no justice,

its millions of stars are the thoughts

of unbridled horsemen.

With blue eyes you will stare

blinded into its blueness

and when you remember your rivers,

the graveyards the mountains,

it is Australia that stands up in front of you,

your question, your love.