The Radical Poet

I am a woman of several faces, buried in between the lines of another man’s history. I am an undertone, an afterthought, a device. You may call me Agnes, Nancy, or Clarinda, for I am all of these names and none. It is my lover, a lowland poet, who calls me by names I did not choose. You know him well.

His name is Robert. Robbie. Rabbie. His name transcends time and borders, like an ancient song lyric, unwearying and crushing.

Robert Burns. My Robert.

I love him breathlessly, and I will chase the exaltation until I am suspended in my own spiritual claustrophobia. He is the smoke, peat, and raw-cut grass of the lowlands. He is hay, field mice, and briny sweat. My name is Agnes, and I am the tramcars, pavements, iron snakes, and glass domes of a city.  I am the hammer-heart of the thrumming city of Glasgow, and I carry its bridges in my collarbones. His hands are two shining mackerels, but mine are cakes of tobacco. We are beautiful opposites. 

Loving Robert Burns is difficult. On this night, by a gooey Glasgow streetlight shrouded in drunkenness and darkness, I walk with my lover on Byres Road. It is 2025, and the most famous songwriter on the planet is mine.  My baby, all mine, to grant me his kisses of love, lust, and abandonment. We walk into a bar, and crowds of people are inside, recognizing him immediately and chanting lyrics from Tam O'Shanter and Auld Lang Syne. Their eyes spark with crazed, ephemeral love. Their hands grasp after him with fleeting urgency, push me out of the way, and for a moment, he forgets that I am holding onto his arm. Robert signs autographs and kisses girls on the cheeks, causing them to nearly pass out on the floor. He disregards me entirely until we enter the dark cave of a private room, blockaded from the fans. 

The bartender serves him Lowland whisky on the house, and charges me for a glass of wine. She tells my Robert, “I love your work. Ae Fond Kiss is a gorgeous song. It’s always on the radio.” 

“You know he wrote that song about me,” I chirp. 

The bartender gives me a sideways look. “...Who are you?” 

I feel as though I am a highland cow who has walked into this bar on this night.  Strange, ruined, red, wild, messy. 

“This is Clarinda, or Nancy,” says Robert. But that’s not my real name. My identity fluctuates between the syllables and addresses of Nancy, Agnes, and Clarinda, depending on what Robert feels he would like to call me. 

“Oh! You’re Nancy!” the bartender gasps. “You must feel like the luckiest woman alive.”  

“I really do.” 

Robert and the bartender start talking, and I become invisible. I melt into the wall's yellow paint and begin to peel apart from the inside. I listen and sip my wine obediently, learning that the bartender’s name is Jenny Clow and she is Robert’s biggest fan.  The thing about being the most famous Scot alive is that you have millions of fans who claim to be the biggest one.  The prettier his fans are, the more he forgets about my tired old face, until his love letters grow weak and lousy. 

People tell me that I am with the most talented man alive. That I am special, because out of all of the girls that swoon over his lyrics and slick Scottish tongue, I am the one he has eyes for. 

And I’m supposed to be grateful for my uniqueness. Well, what about Jean? Jenny? Mary, Nelly, or Elizabeth? What about all the other women? How did they feel? 

I am expected to lap up any piece of love that Robert ever spits onto the ground before me and be happy to do it. His hands seem to shiver against my skin rather than embrace it. He talks at me, not with me, blaspheming my ears with pheromonal phrases. Robert suspends me into conversational torpor, and hangs me by puppet strings in his poetry lines. I have been shrunk to the name Nancy, into a fleeting song lyric, and this is all I’ll ever be. Robert does not know that I carry Glasgow in my ribcage and its rivers in my skin. 

Jenny Clow is only another poetry line for Robert. Her eyes look wild, incited by the radical lust that he inspires. Like me, Jenny will be carved into a Frankenstein of love by him. My patience disappears on the last stream of wine that leaps down my throat. I know that I have been devoured and now lie abandoned for Robert to set his claws on Miss Clow. I stand up silently, cautiously, and leave the bar. The city swallows me whole, and Robert will not find me.

I feel like a fragmented woman, as I slip back into the concrete valleys of this breathing city. My gratitude withers, delicate as it always was, and my own sense of self blooms like a bruise. I grew up in a world of Macintosh roses but Robert grew up in a field of thorns. He made greatness for himself out of straws of hay, so he believes he has earned every right to every piece of the world, including every piece of me. Well, I refuse to be strangled by the confines of his love letters anymore. 

I may miss Robert. His humor. His musicality. His wit. He is a charming but manic man, and I will miss the volatility of it all as I depart, bound for my own equilibrium.

Tonight, I am weary of his philandering, but crucially, I am torn by the way he casts invisibility spells on his women with the shadow of his fame. His old devotion now translates into mere fiction. His truths come and go on his twisted rhythmic pendulum. People call Robert Burns a romantic, but they have no idea how encompassing the description is.