The great asylums of Scotland, cloistered

like the proud abbeys we tore down brick

by brick. Yet harder to love. They docked

at the edge of our towns like relations

with whom we felt ill at ease. Ones who kept

themselves to themselves. Their farms. Their laundries.

Their water supplies. We stand in their portals,

our eyes drawn down the tree-lined avenues

to the prospect of distant hills. Country houses?

Hydros? Oh, what shall we do with them? –

the great asylums of Scotland, still with us,

as keen to serve as the day they were built.

A fleet for their time they set out, freighted

with hope and grand design. Look at them now,

scuttled on the ocean floor. Light floods them.

Along their corridors, doors flap open

on empty cabins with nothing to hide.

In attic rooms the sky's light pours over

a tide-wrack of maps, plans, records – a grid

to lay over a waste of rage, grief, anger

and pain. None of that will make a cairn.

In these, the great asylums of Scotland,

always it is evening about to fall.

The heavy doors are closing in on us all.

and the counting begins. But coming through

the frayed web of darkness are slants of light:

greenness, firstness, hope. What is to be done

with a two-faced legacy such as this?

Multi-occupancy – that's the answer!

Flatpacks to the gentlemen's quarters,

IKEA to the boardrooms. Four by fours

draw up before the great asylums now.

They're made for them, framed by chestnut trees,

like adverts. Inside the auction hall –

the stillness of graveyards, the discretion

of private affairs. Oh how beautiful

are the crafted dovetailes in the wardrobes

no one wants. They sulk like small monuments

history has ignored. So much gloom.

‘I wouldn't want any of it in my house,’

someone says. ‘Not knowing where it's come from.’

As if objects soak up instability

like nicotine. If so, not only so –

for writing up the staircase in Crichton Hall

are oak leaves, carved not by craftsmen from Antwerp,

but by men traipsing over winter fields

from Dalton using a water pipe as guide.

Run your hands over the leaves and you'll feel

their approval for their new asylum.

Though of the mad, little could be salvaged –

not one knitted pullover, not one apron –

for these craftsmen, the trade in lunacy

was a godsend. The melancholy we mourn

they transfromed into bread, milk, sunlight.

Tom Pow was writer in residence at the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2001–2003 and poet in residence at StAnza, Scotland's poetry festival. He is senior lecturer at Glasgow University, Crichton Campus, Dumfries. This poem is from his collection Dear Alice – Narratives of Madness (Salt, 2008), a poetic response to the Crichton Royal, Dumfries. Reproduced with permission from Salt Publishing Limited. © Tom Pow Chosen by Femi Oyebode.