The Academi Cardiff International Poetry Competition

Laurna Robertson

Measuring a Man
After a visit to Newtongrange Minsin Museum

The width of a  man’s thumb was one inch,
the print left by his shoe measured roughly one foot.
A guardsman’s stride made one yard.

The values of chains, poles, furlongs, rods and perches
on the back of a blue school jotter
are long gone.

One acre was the area of land
a man and his horse could plough in one day
… though the man and the horse are both ghosts…

Five millilitres is a dose of red medicine on a plastic spoon.
Thirty grammes : the heft of a packet of crisps in your hand.

Two metres : the height of a door
or the late General de Gaulle.

One kilogramme : a full bag of sugar.
Fifty kilogrammes : a sack of coal.

II

The Lady Victoria Mine travelled west underground
to Carrington Village, south to Dalkeith and east to Newbattle Abbey.

In the largest tunnel nine men could walk abreast,
the lamps in their helmets glancing into the black.

But of all the old side seams
only in Diamond could a man stand erect.

In Siller Willie and Kale Blade
he could sit on his haunches with a straight back.

In Blackbird, on his side,
there was space to reach his arm into the dark.

In Smithy a thin man on his chest
could stretch his hands before him.

The coal in his hutch at the end of a shift
was tallied to him until pay day.

It bought food for his family and time above ground;
time for fresh breeze on his face at his allotment,

the soil light on his spade; time to watch his whippet
racing away over green fields.