Two Poems by Tarn MacArthur

Calchas on Skye

Days like this I might stay on even with my shame.
Little lanterns of gorse and purple fog of heather.
Spilt carrion gut. A pair of golden eagles slow-turning
through morning. Nothing to note within the general
symbolic order of things. No daughters of kings

paying the blood ransom of gods. I could stay happy
in the humdrum of sitzkrieg. Cosy in a clifftop
croft bombed-out by time. Another man in another life.
This ceaseless summer light. Everything becoming
its own world beyond reckoning. Such minor wonders.

The Forest at Cumae

Like any dutiful son
I leave my dead father
to roam the blessed
groves of my memory
where I visit him daily.

And like these birds
I ask all my questions
rhetorically, so if I’m
destined for anything
then let it be surprise.

Tarn MacArthur is a George Buchanan PhD scholar at the University of St Andrews. He is the recipient of a grant from the Québec Council of Arts and Letters, and the Walter and Nancy Kidd Fellowship in Creative Writing at the University of Oregon. His poetry and prose have recently appeared in The Poetry Review, The New Statesman, and The Los Angeles Review of Books.