VISITORS to Edinburgh can hardly avoid encountering the capital’s splendid collection of statues. Stewart Conn singles out four in his 2016 collection, Against the Light (Mariscat Press, £6). Here they are in their contrasting locations.

DAVID HUME

He sits slouched, his incongruous toga

no protection against incessant rain, downcast

eyes glazed, oblivious of the tourists jostling

to take selfies or queuing to rub his lustrous

big toe, before receding to a safe distance

from which they remain on the qui vive, like those

who skulked for nights after his Calton burial

to see if the Devil would come to claim his soul.

ROBERT FERGUSSON

Outside the gates to the Canongate Kirk, a spritely

Robert Fergusson is caught in jaunty mid-stride

yards from a slide made by a group of local children

in whose horseplay he’d like to join, nimbly catching

and returning their snowballs, before heading

for the Scottish Parliament, the Poetry Library

or the nearest alehouse – his last days in Bedlam,

a crown of straw plaited by his own hand, forgotten.

SCOTT MONUMENT

A crusting of snow thickens then crumbles, turning

this draughty belvedere into a tower of sugar-icing,

multi-tiered and tapered, making Gothic gargoyles

of Madge Wildfire, Jeanie Deans, Bailie Nicol Jarvie

and all those carved round its spiral staircase,

while smack at the centre, in white marble, their

creator looks out benignly; under a chill blanket

his loyal deer-hound Maida, uncomplaining as ever.

HENRY DUNDAS

At the mercy of the elements, does Henry Dundas

aloof in St Andrew Square still ponder having been

the most powerful politician of his day? Either way,

unlikely he looks kindly on the skaters circling below,

the helter-skelter and festooned carousel; far less,

as a break in the clouds reveals the view across the Forth,

the American couple emerging from Harvey Nick’s

and her ‘honey, I didn’t realise France was so close’.