A memorial poem to Robert Colquhoun by Ian Rodger, from the Scottish Lines Review #19 in 1962 with a drawing of Two Figures.
In Memoriam Robert Colquhoun
Where should I go? you asked me once.
Is there not anywhere to go?
Inside your heart a fever to be still.
To hold inviolate a peace of green truth.
Was pitched against a thunder in the streets
Of an opaque city with ashened walls.
Where could you go? You with a hurt
That had a different language.
There was distant at the freeways’ ends
Dark muds of estuaries beyond the caravans,
The harsh blood of foxes in rocks, torn goats
Edging green nerves of bracken to peace.
But you could not go. The road was full
Of movement going nowhere.
And they jogged your arm to spill your mind,
Their brittleness confounding your earnest voice.
Your burnished cry was deafened in the blind
Multitude of persons with dull eyes.
And now you go. I can see now
There was somewhere to go.
Where always the Colquhouns were besieged,
Their backs to the mountain, facing east.
At Luss the ancestors will have greeted you,
Holding your sad gaze, a glass in hand.
IAN RODGER
