Donny O’Rourke is the author of the final shortlisted production in this year’s Callum Macdonald Award for poetry pamphlets. His booklet One Light Burning has a dramatic cover showing the silhouette of Glasgow’s Park Circus towers with a single point of light. And his theme of lit windows and the stories behind them gives a coherent focus to the sometimes poignant poems-cum-songs. This short piece recalls the Second World War. - Lesley Duncan

THERE NEVER WAS DARK

There never was dark like the black
of the blitz
What refuge is tin from direct hits?

No basement or shelter can keep out
the dread
Widow’s weeds on each window -
curtains for the dead. . .

We’ll draw mourning’s drapes when
we’ve won never fear
The first light’s come on, soon they’ll
sound the “all clear”

Greenock and Clydebank won’t make
Glasgow doubt. . .
Though all over Europe the lights
have gone out!