Yusef-Komunyakaa

– Aberdeen’s City Centre is a panoply of old, weathered buildings, seasoned – as Yusef Komunyakaa so eloquently puts it in his poem, Ode To The Drum – by wind, dusk and sunlight. To that trio of elements, one would have to add snow and rain, given they are hardly ever in short supply in this corner of the world. Before oil – and some would add, the EU – there was fishing and an entire industry of fish processing in and around the harbour area. These days, gleaming buildings - and car parks - share the skyline, a curious juxtaposition of old and new, brick and glass and perhaps the reinvention of a city.

I walked away- with your face stolen from a crowded room……….. Now you are on my skin, in my mouth - and hair as if you were always woven in my walk… Yusef Komunyakaa said it much better than I could ever say…