The Highlands are not remote anymore,
with a powerful car you can reach the place in a day,
it is the bleakness of the coast
that wore the people down
and sent them overseas
that draws us today,
the miserable sites they left
as desired as any in the land.

Alas, remoteness, where are you?
Where but at the bleak edge of the cities,
in the towerblocks between motorways
where people are removed
edged out from power,
the same hurt squint in their eyes
as is seen in the emigrants' sepia faces
(that I had always presumed
Nature would have made beautiful).