Home  Poets MacGillivray, Alan
|
Alan MacGillivray is a retired teacher and lecturer. He has taught in different parts of Scotland before coming to rest in Glasgow. His first collection was Kindly Clouds (2005). “the saga of fnc gull",a sequence of monologues supposedly spoken by a raucous and non-PC herring gull was selected as one of the Best Scottish Poems 2009 by Andrew Greig for the Scottish Poetry Library's annual online anthology. Alan has also just produced a new collection, "An Altitude Within", published by Kennedy & Boyd (www.kennedyandboyd.co.uk). | |
HOTEL C’EST LA VIE There is a problem with the keycard;
A supercilious porter comes to show you
How to enter, sneers at your luggage.
It turns out not to be the superior room
You were led to expect, only one chair,
No soft bathrobe, a back-street view.
Too late by now for the congenial dining-room.
Room service takes its time, the menu
Much less extensive than you hoped.
Down to suss out the bar. Pricey foreign beer;
A tired-eyed lady smiles an invitation
Across her Perrier, but not in fact to you.
Upstairs again, what madcap revels beckon?
Itemised temptations of the mini-bar,
Porn a la mode on the hotel channel,
Gideon Bible pristine in its drawer. Lying in dark, you eavesdrop on the jungle.
Whispered quarrel in the corridor,
Sirens and slamming doors, insistent
Bleak transactions of the night. Gasps and thumping headboard through the wall,
Machines and music of nocturnal tribes,
Fading at last into their pre-dawn stupor. Would it could end in other than a slow awakening,
The light through the curtain chink, the paper
Outside the door, your morning call to Groundhog Day. Rather a bursting open of the walls, sun
To pour light’s cataract upon a new-made earth,
Your checking-out into a resurrection. |
|
