26 APRIL 1986, Page 26

The Meeting

You put your arms round my neck. `My dear,' you said, `I am sure you will know me.'

But you were reared in the house opposite in the same village many years ago.

And you are now married to a man I do not know but who is settled, quiet.

How strange it is that Gaelic brings back to us the dew of youth and you hanging clothes on an autumn morning when you are a girl.

lain Crichton Smith