This poem was chosen as one of the 10 poems circulated on postcards in celebration of National Poetry Day in Scotland 2010. The poems can also be sent as e-cards from the Scottish Poetry Library website. “Building Vocabulary” originally appeared in Wish I Was Here: A Scottish multicultural anthology. The book was accompanied by a travelling exhibition of portraits of the poets, and so we had the strange experience of going to the National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh to see my portrait!
Wish I Was Here: A Scottish multicultural anthology, ed. Kevin MacNeil & Alec Finlay (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2000)
Building Vocabulary by Christine Laennec
Cianalas:
Who would have thought
I’d have to come
so far from home
to find a word that perfectly captures
the voiceless ache
of having left?
A’dol dhachaidh:
Strange that I should
find restfulness
in a language where
you can never be home,
but only going
homewards.
Cianalas [Gaelic]: homesickness, longing, loneliness, melancholy
A’dol dhachaidh: going home(wards)
© Christine Laennec 2000.
