Haphazardly in the Starless Night by Hugh McMillan sampler

hugh mcmillan is a poet from Penpont in Dumfries and Galloway. He
has written five full collections of poetry and has read in events and poetry
festivals worldwide. His pamphlet Postcards from the Hedge was a winner of
the Callum Macdonald Prize in 2009, a prize he won again for Sheepenned
in 2017; as part of that prize, he became Michael Marks Poet in Residence
for the Harvard Summer School in Napflio, Greece. He was also a winner
of the Smith Doorstep Poetry Prize and the Cardiff International Poetry
Competition. Devorgilla’s Bridge was shortlisted for the Michael Marks
Award and in 2015 was shortlisted for the Basil Bunting Poetry Award. In
2014 Hugh was awarded the first literature commission by the Wigtown
Book Festival to create a work inspired by John Mactaggart’s The Scottish
Gallovidian Encyclopaedia (1824); McMillan’s Galloway was published in
limited edition in 2014 and in a revised edition from Luath in 2015.
His selected poems Not Actually Being in Dumfries were published by Luath
Press in 2015 and this was followed by Heliopolis and The Conversation of
Sheep by Luath in 2018.
He has featured in many anthologies, and three times in the Scottish Poetry
Library’s online selection Best Scottish Poems of the year. His poems have
also been chosen three times to feature on National Poetry Day postcards,
the latest in 2016. In 2020 he was chosen as one of four ‘Poetry Champions’
for Scotland by the Scottish Poetry Library, to seek out and commission
new work. Recently he was given the role as editor of ‘Best Scottish Poems’
for 2021.”

By the same author:
Tramontana, Dog and Bone, 1990
Horridge, Chapman, 1995
Aphrodite’s Anorak, Peterloo Poets, 1996
Strange Bamboo, Shoestring, 2007
Postcards from the Hedge, Roncadora Press, 2009
Devorgilla’s Bridge, Roncadora Press, 2010
Cairn, Roncadora Press, 2011
Thin Slice of Moon, Roncadora Press, 2012
McMillan’s Galloway, privately printed, 2015
Not Actually being in Dumfries, Luath Press, 2015
McMillan’s Galloway: A Creative Guide by an Unreliable Local, Luath Press, 2017
Sheepenned, Roncadora Press, 2017
Heliopolis, Luath Press, 2018
The Conversation of Sheep, Luath Press, 2018
Whit If?, Luath Press, 2021

Haphazardly in the
Starless Night
HUGH McMILLAN

First published 2021
isbn: 978-1-910022-89-4
The author’s right to be identified as author of this book under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988 has been asserted.
The paper used in this book is recyclable. It is made from low chlorine pulps
produced in a low energy, low emission manner from renewable forests.
Printed and bound by Severnprint Ltd., Gloucester
Typeset in 10.5 point Sabon by Lapiz
© Hugh McMillan 2021

Contents
wraiths
The Nature of Art 11
The Wishbone 12
My Father at the Bakers 13
The Wait 15
Benches of Wigtown 16
George Catlin and the Moon-Eyes 17
Glayva 18
The Cart Track 19
Autumn in Scotland 21
The Language of the Sun 22
It Was That Time of Night, John 23
A Picture of the Vessel Agnes,
Near Dockfoot 24
The Trip up North I Never
Went on with Tim Propp 26
Ring of Water 28
Hoard29
The Poet 30
Going31
The Alexandria Quartet 32
Twelve Roads 34
At Sea 41
The Queen of Bohemia’s Allegorical Garden 43
Marguerite D’Écosse 45
The Museum of Memory 46
Christmas at the Hair Boutique the
Day after the Election that
Plunged Britain into Gloom 48
5

Scottish Poet Killed while Trying
to say the Right Thing about Burns 50
SALE52
portents
Jasmine at a Maths Exam 54
Lydia Just Before her Life Changes 55
A Curlew Cries 57
Burntisland Sept 6th 58
Watching Andy Goldsworthy
Being Collected in a Taxi 59
The World of Poetry 60
Baggage61
The Supply Teacher’s Last Lesson 63
Another Push Towards Carlisle 65
Confession66
On the Last Day of my Life 68
A Castle that Might be Stirling 71
Reunion 72
Procession 73
Dream75
Here and There 77
Getting There 78
Storm Glass 79
Your Day in the Sun 81
That is the Way that Time Works 82
With their Violins 83
Ghosts of the Scaur 84
Chronicles of Rain 87
A Breath 88
A Casual Conversation 89
Two Men Below a Bad
Weather Forecast 90
6

pestes
Public Safety Advice Oan the
Brent-New Pestilence 1348 92
Bounty93
Two Worlds 94
Flattening the Curve 95
The Ballad of Bessie Bell
and Mary Gray 96
Three Days in May 98
It’s not Sunday it’s Tuesday 100
Book in the Grass 101
Keep Smiling Through 102
All This Time 104
Caravan106
Positioning Three Words in a Poem 107
Sources109
The Cyanometer 110
The New Old Age 111
Next Year 113
Carol114
Birthday 2021 115
Poem on a bus ticket 117
The Path below the Linden Tree 118
A Thursday Morning in May 119
Nigel and Kenny 120
Couple, New Cumnock 121
Advice to the Makars
Wigtown 2019 123
t reynolds 124
Licht125
Sunday 126
A Break in the Weather 127
From Here to the Sea 129
7

Relocation Relocation 130
Showers may clear away from the
Dalmuir area this afternoon 131
Crossing the Spheres 132
Long View 133
Carbonation 134
Holy Lemon You 135
I am No Mariner 136
Are We There Yet? 137
Acknowledgements138
8

Wraiths

The Nature of Art
Art was always a thing in our house
or artiness: we were thought of
as bohemians,
had the qualifications:
poverty, scandal, a frisson of madness.
My father, stuck in rage and guilt,
wrote a short story about a soldier
in a desert stuck in rage and guilt
and painted birds that could not fly.
My sister drew a landscape
she walked into.
I wrote a poem about snow
that never fell, filled gaps like that
with empty words.
My mother tore a photograph
of the mv Columba from a brochure
or the People’s Friend,
stuck it on the wall
with sellotape that yellowed
as the years passed,
wished she was there.
11

The Wishbone
On the windowsill,
its white paint old
and flaking,
was a wishbone,
a pewter pot beside it
that my mother said
was from home.
Moss mould was
on the edges of glass
and on the outside
the perpetual dark
of weeds gone wild.
There was a wishbone
on the windowsill,
it was huge like a dinosaur’s,
yellow and stained
with the ghost of blood.
A pterodactyl bone,
a pagan bone,
the fundament of a roc.
It was there for years
while round it the house
fell apart. It’s still there
in a shelf of my mind.
No one did.
No one dared really.
12

My Father at the Bakers
On the veranda
is a bony old man
who but for
the kombolói
reminds me
of my father.
He has a thin
moustache
and baggy shorts
and his right
foot is agitating
at the marble
as if
pumping some
accelerator
that would have
him in a wish
at the top
of that mountain
concealed now
in cloud
and haze.
If he were here
I would ask him
if he preferred
mountains
to coastlines,
you are supposed
to be one
or the other
I would say.
13

So many questions
and still
a language barrier.
It’s a fantasy
thinking of him
like this,
I can’t have seen
him old.
Perhaps
in my mind
he has
aged with me
though this too
is a fruitless
train of thought
because one
of the few facts
I know
is that he’s
dust.
We’ll just sit here
for a moment
his doppelgänger
and I
and stare
at a middle
distance
populated
this hot
and sultry
morning
by the living
the imagined
and the dead.
14