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Culbin Sands

Andrew Young

Here lay a fair fat land;
But now its townships, kirks, graveyards
Beneath bald hills of sand
Lie buried deep as Babylonian shards.

But gales may blow again;
And like a sand-glass turned about
The hills in a dry rain
Will flow away and the old land look out;

And where now hedgehog delves
And conies hollow their long caves
Houses will build themselves
And tombstones rewrite names on dead men’s graves.


Andrew Young

from Selected Poems (Carcanet, 1998)

Reproduced by kind permission of Carcanet Press.

Tags:

change Highlands & Islands landscape Placebook Scotland Poetry By Heart Scotland post-1914 possibility rebirth
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Andrew Young1885 - 1971

Andrew Young was born in Elgin. His life after1920 was spent in Sussex, but his landscape poetry often returns to Scottish locations.
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