Ghost Town
This town, this town
Like a carousel turns around
Faces in the circus
Each a kind of clown
Painted skin and staircases
Draped in Adam’s Ale
All will turn to Ice Castles
Come the Wind and Hail
Fortress, stronghold, bearer of the monk
Shed loads of lotteries
Every Murder investigation sunk
All because you don’t belong
They say under hushed tones
Concealing garments of Arab beans
Around necklaces of crushed bones
All escalators jar on the snow peppered Mountain
tops
They heave their sighs
In heave hoes
Between the goes
And stops
Even the Avalanche will eventually lose
control
And then all the helpless victims
Will be released from frozen snow
Here is where the clock ticks
But nobody counts the days
Each are blended today in tomorrow
As billiards knock, kick and part in sorrow
This Haunted place of Ghosts
No wonder Clansmen die
From the painted Motherwell
To the long lost spear of Mackie
Shaken are the frigid hands
That turn to write the page
All are white who can call fright
Back to the Scottish Stage
Macbeth is in is Torpor
The Lady runs blood down the drain
The Wind windmills the wheelie Bins
And it never ceases to rain
The figures in this Chrysalis
The Winter Queen has stilled
Are as the knaves whom at Fairies hands
Will find their life bloods chilled
Some say ghosts are breeding
Some say darkness walks
Hand in hand with feeding
As the Stag’s Head talks
Too many deaths have bleached the ground
Too much blood has soaked its moss
And in these Clan destined days
The wedding sounds drowned out
By the voices of loss
Who here was a Cameron?
Who there a Jacobite who rose?
Who Frames the accursed James
Now lays himself where the thistle grows
Fort William, this town, Onich and Corpach
Bring out your dead
Lay out their bodies
But their souls to here come back
Give them six feet to lay in
Give them a horse’s span
Leave them hands to hold them
They will hold them if they can
Each a living member
Each a tie to Earth
The Mountain Glen
Does remember what its men
In death are truly worth
Living life must cling here
Enter and hang in the air
Each torpid wind-blown vapour
Remembers each wisp of hair
Heavy is the fog now
Heavy on the Pine
Heavy the heave ho, the tug-o-war
And heavy on the Mountain line
Train tracks through the hollow
Deer tracks on the snow
Under the earthen grave so shallow
In the rivers wake they tow
Remember this Fort’s fighting
Remember Romans, English, Danes and Picts
Celts fought in the Mountain Belts
All fought over land
With hands or sticks
Remember said the Winter King
To the Summer Wren
The Season’s change,
But, I remain
Ruler over Men
The Robin flies off from the Holly
The boys beat the bounds sounding jolly
And Winter skins the leafless trees
As the lone figure stands in the folly
Remember when,
The voices ken,
Resound, resound
Within the Glen
Remember me when the Ghosts are Gone
From this Ghost Town
Fort William
