Scottish Poem

Two Girls Singing

It neither was the words nor yet the tune.
Any tune would have done and any words.
Any listener or no listener at all.

As nightingales in rocks or a child crooning
in its own world of strange awakening
or larks for no reason but themselves.

So on the bus through late November running
by yellow lights tormented, darkness falling,
the two girls sang for miles and miles

and it wasn't the word or tune. It was the singing
It was the human sweetness in that yellow,
the unpredicted voices of our kind.



Iain Crichton Smith