Middle of the Road

I’ll ha’e nae hauf-way hoose, but aye be whaur
Extremes meet – it’s the only way I ken
To dodge the curst conceit o’ bein’ richt
That damns the vast majority o’ men.
– Hugh MacDiarmid

How did we get here?
This passing place on the way
to getting auld, this half-way hoose
we’re holed-in, this space where
we remember things the young don’t
and are cut from
what the auld hold dear.

‘Centrist Dads’, aware
there are limits we must not go beyond.
And aware, though faces weather,
spirit needn’t wither.
Caught in the current of a river,
we take shelter in the attic
no fanatic can attack:

the head-space we make for art.

ROSS WILSON

…………………………………………………

This poem isn’t strictly a poem written in response to another poem, but its author Ross Wilson has said that the four-line verse quoted under its title ‘crossed my mind in the writing’. The verse is by Hugh MacDiarmid, a man described as ‘the father of the modern Scottish imagination’, and is taken from his long masterpiece in the Scots language, ‘A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle’.

For those unfamiliar with Scots, MacDiarmid’s words read in English as, ‘I’ll have no half-way house, but always be where extremes meet – it’s the only way I know to dodge the cursed conceit of being right that damns the vast majority of men’. MacDiarmid was certainly a man of extremes: both a communist and a Scottish nationalist; a poet who early in his career forged a literary Scots for poems as intense and visionary as William Blake’s, and later in his career wrote long poems in prose-like English.

MacDiarmid once composed a notable response-poem, an angry rebuke to the popular lyric poet AE Housman for praising ‘an army of mercenaries’ (actually the professional soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force that fought in the First World War). MacDiarmid took aim at Housman, but Wilson’s poem is less a diatribe against extremity than a regretful sigh over life’s compromises. Wilson, a schoolboy champion boxer who became an auxiliary nurse in an Intensive Care Unit, could well be said to live ‘where extremes meet’.

The linguistic differences between MacDiarmid’s and Wilson’s words reflect the poem’s theme: the extremity of the uncompromising artist versus the all-too-human state of passion tempered by responsibility which characterises most lives. MacDiarmid was writing in a mix of vernacular and archaic Scots while Wilson writes as he speaks, in an English coloured by the Scots words of his upbringing (so, ‘auld’ rather than ‘old’, ‘hoose’ rather than ‘house’); like neat whisky watered down a little – and maybe a lot – but still with a kick to it.

The poem’s opening words bring something other than literary allusions to mind. ‘How did we get here?’ can’t fail to remind certain readers of the 80s hit single ‘Once in a Lifetime’ by Talking Heads (especially its lines: ‘And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife, / And you may ask yourself, Well, how did I get here?’) – a song on the theme of life’s compromises that has a manic intensity to it. In a similar way, Wilson voices the rational sentiment ‘there are limits we must not go beyond’ while ratcheting up his language to the aural extreme of ‘the attic / no fanatic can attack’.

‘Middle of the Road’ isn’t a middling poem, but a plainly expressed longing for an extremity it affects to spurn.

Note: Ross Wilson joined our team of reviewers after this poem was accepted by Into Poetry for publication. His essay on the Irish poets Seamus Heaney and Louis MacNeice will appear here soon. Ross’s latest collection is Vital Signs (Red Squirrel Press, 2023).