Culbin Sands by Andrew Young | Scottish Poetry Library

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.

from Selected Poems (Carcanet, 1998)

Reproduced by kind permission of Carcanet Press.