Each had his or her thoughts: pleasure at being in company – and such good company too; delight at the pungent smell of the white truffle sauce and the texture of the tagliatelle; eager anticipation of the course, and discourse, yet to come. For her part, looking down the table, Domenica caught Angus’s eye and raised her glass to him, a private toast, which he responded to with a toast of his own. And then, half-way through the meal, Domenica tapped her now empty glass with a spoon. It was the right moment, she thought; any later and people might feel maudlin, or tired. It was just the right moment.
“Every year,” she said, “Angus kindly recites a poem of his own composition. The time for that poem has now arrived.”
“We would not have it otherwise,” said Roger Collins.
“No indeed,” agreed Hugh Lockhart.
Angus looked down, in modesty. “Dear friends,” he said. “My heart is full…”
And he continued:
“But not so full that I cannot speak of love;
For that, you know, is the truest of words
Most profoundly spoken, in any tongue,
And in any circumstances.
May we who are blessed in friendship
Find it always in our hearts
To speak that word and make it the fulcrum
Of all our acts; proclaim it, too,
Our guiding light in moral gloaming.
Love heals, makes whole,
Restores the delicate balance
That so long ago went out of kilter,
When hatred and suspicion first
Uttered their beguiling, primeval snarl.
I am a Scot, and a patriot;
I love this country, for all its ways,
I am as moved as any when I see
That landscape of quiet glens,
Those pure burns and rivers,
Those blue seas and islands
Half blue. I love all that,
And the people who dwell therein;
But I love, too, our neighbours
And those who are not our neighbours;
I shall never relish their defeats,
Nor celebrate their human difficulties;
For, frankly, what is the alternative?
I see no other way.
I see no other way but that;
I see no other way but love.”
He finished. He may have had more words, but he could not utter them; not now. And nobody had anything to add to what he had said; no words of dispute or disagreement, for what he had said was all true, every word of it.
Alexander McCall Smith
