I’ve come all the way 
to Crear to think about Robert Burns 
and Revolution and Mahatma Gandhi 
and the Berlin Wall. 

All afternoon, I’ve been watching the wind 
awaken the grass, watching how every blade 
rustles – a rapid trembling, as if the grass 
wants to move like the wings of a hummingbird – 

And as I listen to the wind, I think of Gandhiji 
serving his first prison sentence 
in 1908, in South Africa.   
I imagine him sitting in the prison library – 
which he did. I imagine him reading 
Carlyle’s biography of Robert Burns – 
which he did. 

That Gandhiji of lemon juice and salt 
once wrote that he was afraid - 
that Gandhiji who walked through fields
with my grandmother, preferred the wind
as his witness.

At Crear I watch rainbows melt back
into the sky. I walk over stones
and clumps of grass, circle around the soggy
wet ground. At Crear
I can understand more Scots.

And what shall I say about 1989?
It was the year my daughter was born.
Her eyes, now green, now gold,
depending on the light. When I see her
again, her eyes will remind me
of Crear - although she’s never been here.

And what shall I say about the Berlin Wall?
In West Berlin they thought I was a gypsy,
a refugee -    in East Berlin I was
only my passport, completely untouchable.
I had a bag of Rajastthani red
cotton embroidered with mirrors
and mirrors and blue and yellow flowers.

Did the mirrors help me through those streets?
One day everything fitted
into the bag: Gorbachev’s book, the Guardian
and a bottle of West German Sekt -
Glasnost itself taken into East Berlin
on a summer day in 1987.

All this I brood over at Crear.
All this feels unreal today,
and yet, it comes back to life, sharper
in this salty air - where the songs
we wish to hear are full of praise.