(i)

It's no use
the legs aren't up to it anymore
and he's barely an eighth of the way up the mountain
when some kindly climbers
opt to help him down.
Confused and broken of spirit
he is returned to the home
and time stops passing once more.

(ii)

The fog whose descent
has sent him north
has one last trick to play:
though he reaches the top,
through bog and heather
and bone-weary exhaustion,

it is the wrong mountain.
He has misremembered the name
and all he finds at the hard-won cairn
is a gentle ***** down the other side
and a group of picnickers
who eye him with sympathy.

(iii)

A circle which was opened
when he was fourteen;
when a frozen night in a frozen tent
was swept aside
by a breathless climb
to a dazzling white peak -
Liathach -
and a view over crashing cliffs
into the wild blue
bore the thought,
"This, when the time comes,
is where I will end it!" -
is closed.
And the body joins
the half-flown soul
in the mist-swallowed distance
and beyond.

Six in a row,
coincidental in itself,
all screaming at me
like the audience at a pantomime:
"Look behind you!"

So I do.
And there's still nothing there.

For a modest subscription -
say, £100 a month -
you can receive my weekly newsletter
outlining the manner in which I undertake
to steal your jobs,
besmirch your womenfolk
(or menfolk, if you like),
impose my religion upon you,
undermine your financial system,
eat the swans in your local park,
raise/lower house prices (as your current need dictates),
contribute to a nameless sense of dread,
dilute your cherished national identity
and produce more illiterate children than the welfare state
can reasonably support.

I will do you this service
on the understanding
that you will stop attributing blame
to your undeserving neighbours
and get on with your life
like a decent human being.

Gazing west,
we forget the North at our peril.
Frost giants die
for lack of attention
Bifrost molders in grimy skies
and the wild hunt
goes hungry again

Yggdrasil is dying.
As omens go,
this is not a good one.

Work your fingers raw for a pittance
and you wish one day to bid good riddance
to your destiny,
good riddance to your destiny
Looking up you see them grinning down
but ask why they keep winning
and they'll label you the enemy
they'll label you the enemy
So you've got three kids and you're ******
because your salary's been cut
and you're burning up the furniture
you're burning up the furniture
Well they can trace their ****** blood generations
and their current lordly station
is their holy primogeniture
it's their holy primogeniture
You can sing and dance apologise and grovel
You can mark your x and ******* to the hovel
that you'll never own
the hovel that you'll never own
Meanwhile they will never leave the school
that tells them they are born to rule
till we vote the buggers on the throne
we vote the buggers on the throne
This land ain't your land
this land ain't my land
not the Glasgow dockyard
nor the empty Highland
this land is their land
it's bleed you dry land
and you'll be laid to rest here
beneath the wonder why land.

Look,
you can surely tell
that I feel the indignity of the situation
by the way I cannot meet your eye.
Yes, I look ridiculous,
but nature has called
and I must answer.
**** to a tree,
heels on the ground,
vulnerable -
it's not the image
my wolfen ancestors
would wish you to observe.

No, I'm no great fan
of the substance I produce,
but you needn't wrinkle your nose -
it was you who led me here, after all,
and I'm sure yours is no sweeter.

I'll make you a deal:
you avert your eyes
while I take care of this
and I'll avert mine
and pretend not to notice
when you pick it up carefully in a bag
and carry it around.

A certain quiet glinting in the corner of my eye
a prickle-necked foreboding in a sullen winter sky
An ultrasonic wavelength tuned to sorrow and to fear
comes manifest, projected through my wish to bring it near
A pressure change, a slamming door, a thought of things undone
comes seeping through the paintwork for a bit of spectral fun

And I can sit complacently and watch the show unfold
My perfect explanations make me curious and bold
I wonder how my brain will paint this misty-coloured scene
What face will fly from memory where no face should have been
I have no need for magic or for spirits of the dead
But seek the secret passages that twine within my head

And here it comes, as if on cue, parading through the wall
(A weaker man than me would think his wisdom rather small)
The wraith is clothed in folklore, stepping past without a glance
And I would laugh it off but for one ghastly circumstance:
For all my knowledge, nothing helps the second that I see
That solid as I feel, this ghost
                                                     does not
                                                                ­       believe
                                                                ­                      in me.