The Drove

Over the hard mountain,

we, the herd, pitifully bellow,

but those that drive us

have no pity.

The only thing they say,

as a sop to our understanding,

is to laughingly remark,

'This is the old drove road

our father's grandfather made.

There is no other path for you, or us.'

Do not cry, fellow cattle,

for I see no return to the

sun-warming fields of the strath,

the green glen where we were bred.

Now we are forced to see cruel lands,

crossing Druim Alban, the bare,

heart-broken Spine of Britain.

All like us face the hard miles south,

away to market or worse.

In the thief's night we still move.

Our horns reflect the yellow dead smile

of our sister moon.

Heat from our flanks rises

as sour mist, not concealing

the sad clan's movement.

Mountains become hills

become the Lowlands

we would have loved to roam.

Now, cruelly, the voices driving us

become another language,

no less hostile to us, 

and we see the magic evaporate,

so we are no more the dumb herd

of beasts subject to their cruelty,

but men and women much like them,

driven, driven on to 

the dark market place.