On Epilogues (for St Andrews)

St Andrews by the Northern Sea,
A haunted town it is to me!
A little city, worn and grey,
The grey North Ocean girds it round,
And o’er the rocks, and up the bay,
The long sea-rollers surge and sound.
And still the thin and biting spray
Drives down the melancholy street,
And still endure, and still decay,
Towers that the salt winds vainly beat.
Ghost-like and shadowy they stand
Dim mirrored in the wet sea-sand […]

“Almae Matres”, Andrew Lang
(St Andrews, 1862. Oxford, 1862)

I have always said that St Andrews was at the edge of the world. Here, time lags, and seems to draw out the sun each morning and night to more colours and directions than you thought possible, as though stretching for time. Reading Andrew Lang’s poem, I see that nothing much changes here but for its inhabitants. One-hundred-and-fifty years later, ‘still the thin and biting spray / Drives down the melancholy street / And still endure, and still decay, / Towers that the salt winds vainly beat. / Ghost-like and shadowy they stand / Dim mirrored in the wet sea-sand.’

As though stretching for time …

Never have I been more acutely aware of the ghosts that live here than now. The town has been evacuated, or retreated into. Abrupt goodbyes were said, hastily the streets were left and doors sealed. As I walk through this town, I feel caught in the epilogue - the quietude of an end after the end.

Yet still the sea surges, having survived the hauntings and resurrections of this town, and I hear it heave: ‘and still endure, and still decay / […] Dearer far the little town / The drifting surge, the wintry year, / The college of the scarlet gown. / St Andrews by the Northern Sea, /That is a haunted town to me!’ (“Almae Matres”, Lang)

Thought of the Day

I feel caught in the epilogue - the quietude of an end after the end. Yet still the sea surges, having survived the hauntings and resurrections of this town, and I hear it heave: ‘and still endure, and still decay / […] The college of the scarlet gown. / St Andrews by the Northern Sea / That is a haunted town to me!’

- Gabriela Milkova