Poetry Competition Winner 2014

Homecoming: A Triptych

By Sean Hoath, Glasgow

I:

Robin asks me in the night

How far have you flown

At least that is how his song is interpreted

I consider my countermelody

Unsure of its tenor line

Remembering my journey from a place named after this one

I answer in my stride

Many miles for a home

And soft I hope this night that Robin understands

 

II

A new home greets me here

Like each new home before it

The multiplicity of beds in which I’ve slept

None ever feeling like a journey’s end

I’ve not truly communicated in any of them

I live here a moment

Hoping the memory will last

When I ran in the rain to the waves of the sea

And sang to the wind at the break of the dawn

And was baptised by the bay in the morn

When I cried as I asked myself

Where do you live

 

III

Through the cloud breaks the sun in the east

Beckoning me follow

O Robin won’t you join me

As you and I are carried on the wind

To lands of new languages

Lilting in the noonday sun

 

Words and doors unknown await us all

Will we then return their call

Entweder ja oder nein,  ca c’est la bonne question

Des langues parlent de tout le monde

If we would but listen

To the tongues of teachers and tailors

Of troubled mothers or trusted friends

In the home stretching out around us

2014 Winner

2013 Winner

2012 Winner

2011 Winner

2010 Winner

2009 Winner

2008 Winner

2007 Winner