Young Blade

Young Blade - David Kinloch

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This is an ekphrastic poem that responds to two paintings, one of which is the iconic 'The Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch', attributed to Sir Henry Raeburn. This depicts a rather prim and proper Enlightenment clergyman skating into some rather Romantic looking hills. There is also another painting by Charles Lees of member of the first Scottish skating club practicing their moves by moonlight on the same loch. My poem conflates the two paintings. It also touches on a minor scandal that shook the Scottish art world a while ago when an academic had the temerity to suggest that The Reverend Walker had not been painted by a ...

Young Blade

Moonlight becomes blades, blades moon-

light as they lilt and pivot out of shadow

into yellow pool: I make a point and stop:

steam breath into air that cracks like ice,

close eyes upon a world that gleams

and scrapes and rasps; ‘Look out!’

Brown, behatted, a figure grasps

my arm and birls me about; I make a run:

circling to the centre of the loch –

cross stroke, chassé, cross over slip – turn

and look back across the white and shining

field: the huddle of ‘ingenues’

practising their 8s, the cries of ‘off!’

and ‘change!’ the silver scales

of safety ropes slithering from baskets;

silence set off by a distant swish.

And so I see the scene again: late

afternoon; the little minister, still svelte

but on the verge of portliness, breasting

the ice with a frank and open stroke;

his friends, the painters, smiling, betting:

which one could lay down just that shade

of lilac shadow cast by the suburban

Mercury, silhouetted contre jour?

Then, the sudden hush as water tensed

at his instruction, trout gazed up at his incisive feet.

I felt that God must be in clarity like this

and listened to the valley echo

the striations of his silver blades.

Far out on Duddingston Loch

our true apostle sped with twice the speed

of Christ who walked on waves.

I saw him harrow ice with grace of the elect

and scar the transubstantiation

of wintered elements. At once I heard

a tapping from the hills

as if a tiny hammer big with work

sought to split this world: the shelf

of ice with all its merry skaters

cracked from side to side then tipped

like a sinking ship; loch made

meadow loch as little cows,

aristocratic blades, the Reverend

and his painters clung to trees

above a sundered castle, floated off

to villages, new towns, enlightened

schemes and sunken moonlit pastures.

With a sense of real presence

he crossed my vision: and I wondered

if it mattered which man would win

the bet: Raeburn or Danloux?

Both helped him to untie

the fine pink inkles strapping blade

to boot and walked away with him

arm in arm towards the village.

from Finger of a Frenchman (Carcanet, 2011), © David Kinloch 2011, used by permission of the author and the publisher

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