Andrew Philip: Two Poems

Andrew Philip

Andrew Philip was born in Aberdeen in 1975 and grew up near Falkirk. He lived in Berlin for a short spell in the 1990s before studying linguistics at Edinburgh University. His first full collection, The Ambulance Box, is published by Salt and has been shortlisted for the Aldeburgh Prize, the Scottish Arts Council first book award and, most recently the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize for Poetry. His blog, Tonguefire, can be found at http://www.andrewphilip.net

MacAdam Essays the Meaning of Loss

Angels chatter on aerials, masts and phone wires
around a forecourt studded with covenantal drops.
The reluctant hero, aged 18, jumps off the bus
to wild acclaim from above and is ignored

by everyone shadowing the streets this fine
early spring forenuin. MacAdam – guestimate:
21 again and counting back the way –
would be equally indifferent but that he'd know

what we are avoiding in our hero's eye:
a slendercast of all he left behind to learn
the pressure needed for a happy trigger.
Now, reader, look again: the scene is gone,

the bottom of the page a smoking barrel, empty
like MacAdam's glass, pretending on the bar
where those who know the terror of a beauty in
established labour wait with the angels for a sign.

MacAdam Essays an Act of Faith

Water’s a
persuasive barrier

to most
but MacAdam

takes to it
like a stone

skimming
a flat loch

on a sunlit
morning

until his
unlikely feet

send him
— no boat

no miracle hand
in sight —

                                                   towards the deep
                                                       dazzling
                                                                       dark