Scotland's Saint

By Glenn Telfer

Poems inspired by Saint Columba’s on-going mission to Scotland.

A light-hearted, but erudite and faithful collection of poems exploring Scotland’s Christian heritage through the life of its most famous saint, Saint Columba. Other saints, Ninian and Mungo, turn up too as the collection moves between the heroic age of Scottish Christianity and our own time.
The saint’s return is long overdue, no-one’s listening anymore to the message.
Except, maybe, you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Glenn Telfer
• Release date: Apr 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311150264

Glenn Telfer

I am now almost fully grown, being born in 1956 in working-class Glasgow, Scotland (from Kinning Park, Dennistoun and Ibrox, if you’re asking). The hammer and tongs, coal-powered world I grew up in is as gone as Troy, and with it the industrial working class that served it. What seemed so solid and forever, disappeared almost overnight and is rapidly becoming unknowable except through people like me. The hasty departure of a way of life and its replacement by globalized uncertainty is both the background to my life and the raw material of my art. Considering what’s gone, what’s here, what’s yet to come is what I’m about; itemising the bill of life through my writing. Other poets have explored this too, but none are as like the poet as he is himself. This is my special qualification. Imagine being able to write a book? Even when I was a wee boy throwing stones and playing street football I wanted to be a writer. And all the while I thought I was living my life backwards and sideways I was actually tracing a Celtic knotwork to here. Whatever the reason for this want, this writing may be the cure. May be is also maybe not.

Book preview

AT GLENCOLMCILLE

a sight to make a stone weep

and may yet.

Faded pictures, Christening cups,

bangles and ribbons, wind-lashed

teddy,a wee red toy car

children’s play things spoilt

and scattered by a clumsy hand.

Memories of a heart-ache

that filled the frame to bursting

and was only salved by being

battered into unconsciousness

by the drink or madness

but, although fading to their

earthly nothings in the relentless

Atlantic weather,

these pathetic tokens of

a sad and Oh so little mortal life

are mere cyphers for a power

that dwarfs the vastness

of the pain and bathes

that crucifying world in

Warm Golden Light.

They are not forgotten

and never will be

even when the carriers

of the burden let it go

for the last time

which is why they are here

for Columba to hold them

safe in his arms forever

a guarantee from ancient days

that means what it says;

Take my hand and trust me.

We have friends along the road

who want to meet you.

THE MESSAGE

Once forgetting who he worked for

Columba found out the hard way

not to cross his employer’s plans

for Scotland.

He found out too that

beautiful accommodates ruthless

the angel appearing not as

the expected cherub but

an SS Sturmscharführer with Iron Cross

and Gold Oak Leaves

an angelic enforcer who