Skip to content

Scottish Poetry Library

Register/Sign in
Shopping Bag Shopping Bag
Bringing people and poems together
  • Home
  • Poetry
    • Poets
    • Poems
    • Makar – National Poet
      • Our Waking Breath: A Poem-letter from Scotland to Ukraine
      • A Woman’s A Woman
      • The story of the Makar – National Poet of Scotland
    • Best Scottish Poems
    • Spiorad an Àite
      Spirit of Place
    • The Trysting Thorns
    • Poetry Ambassadors
      Tosgairean na Bàrdachd
      • Poetry Commissions: Walter Scott 250
        Coimiseanan Bàrdachd: Walter Scott 250
      • Poetry Ambassadors 2021
    • Poetry Ambassadors 2020
    • Posters
    • Podcasts
  • Library
    • Become a borrower
    • Catalogue
    • Collections
    • Ask a librarian
    • Copyright enquiries
  • Learning
    • SQA set texts
    • Learning resources
    • Designing sensory poetry activities
    • Children’s poems in Scots
    • National Poetry Day archive
    • New to poetry?
    • Advice for poets
  • Events
    • What’s On
    • Meeting rooms and venue hire
    • Exhibitions
  • Shop
    • Poetry Highlights
    • Entropie Books
    • Stichill Marigold Press
    • Poems for Doctors, Nurses & Teachers
    • Scottish Poetry
    • Poetry Pamphlet Cards
    • Help
  • About us
    • Our story
    • Our people
    • Company Papers & Policies
    • Our projects
    • Our building
    • FAQs
    • Find us
  • Support us
    • Become a Friend
    • Donate
  • Blog
Shopping BagShopping Bag
Ask a librarian
  • Home
  • >
  • Poetry
  • >
  • Donald S. Murray
  • >
  • Love-making in St Kilda
Donate Donate icon Ask a Librarian Ask a Librarian icon

Love-making in St Kilda

Donald S. Murray

When a man makes love to a St Kildan woman,
her moans and sighs are like the cries of birds –
a cooing and screaming that seems scarcely human
but has been fashioned never to disturb
those who might mistake the sounds their passion makes
for flocks circling Village Bay at night.
Scanning skies for wings when morning breaks,
neighbours wake unaware that soaring flight
had taken place in Main Streets walls
as a man and woman coupled to break free
from an island’s bonds and strictures, all
that conspired to tie them down. Gravity
was shed along with trousers, skirt and shawl
as they touched the heights the birds could reach
with their bodies’ power and beauty, rise and fall,
arms charged to wings by the tumultuous air they breathed.


Donald S. Murray

published in The Dark Horse (Winter 07-08)

Reproduced by permission of the author.

Tags:

21st century poems Best Scottish Poems 2008 scottish poems

About this poem

This poem was included in Best Scottish Poems 2008. Best Scottish Poems is an online publication, consisting of 20 poems chosen by a different editor each year, with comments by the editor and poets. It provides a personal overview of a year of Scottish poetry. The editors in 2008 were Rosemary Goring and Alan Taylor.

Editors’ comment: 
The whimsy of this poem is uplifting. There is an invigorating rebelliousness in the couple who break the rules of the noises they make when having sex, thus allowing them to slip free of the noose that is trammelled, law-abiding, repressive island life. One doubts St Kilda has ever been written about in such a way (even now it would be too risky, no doubt, to treat the populated Outer Hebrides like this). Magical realism is thin on the ground in Scottish literature, but here it is vividly invoked to express the desire in all of us to escape convention and fly in the face of disapproval.

Author’s note:
I have always been interested in the bird-life of areas like the Hebrides. Ever since I was young, my eyes have been drawn by the sight of gannets on the horizon or tractors on the island moor scattering terns and lapwings before their wheels. This poem was partly sparked by a visit to St Kilda, forty miles west of the rest of the Outer Hebrides, where I spent a week a number of years ago but also by the thought of how those living in small island communities often lack the small privacies that mainlanders take for granted. This was clearly an even greater problem early last century. Husbands and wives lived with their large families in small, cramped houses like those in Main Street, St Kilda. How did they find the time and peace to share physical love and intimacy with one another?

This poem offers its own solution to that problem, finding it in the sounds of the birds with which these islanders shared their lives.

Share this
Facebook
Twitter
Email

Learn more

Best Scottish Poems 2008

edited by Rosemary Goring & Alan Taylor
Find out more

Donald S. Murrayb.1956

Lewisman Donald S. Murray now lives in Shetland. He has written much about islands and the seabirds that fly around them, and about the weaving, fishing and other trades and traditions associated with his native and adopted islands.
More about Donald S. Murray

Events

Discover our poetry events at the library & online.
Find forthcoming Events
  • Newsletter signup
  • Accessibility
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
Scottish Poetry Library
5 Crichton's Close, Canongate
Edinburgh EH8 8DT
Tel: +44 (0)131 557 2876
© Scottish Poetry Library 2022.
The Scottish Poetry Library is a registered charity (No. SCO23311).
City of Edinburgh logo Green Arts Initiative logo Creative Scotland logo
Scottish Poetry Library