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  • Shetland
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Shetland

Helen Mort

Wind-whittled, turned on the sea’s lathe too long,
built by a craftsman who can’t leave it alone:
the trees scoured off, the houses pared down
to their stones, the animals less skin than bone.

We walk to Windhoose, find a barn even the ghosts
have left, a sheep’s spine turning on a string,
a name reduced to nothing but it’s sound.
Our silences become the better part of us.


Helen Mort

‘Shetland’ is the second part of a longer poem ‘North of Everywhere’.
From Division Street (London: Chatto & Windus, 2013)

Reproduced by permission of the author and the publisher.

Tags:

ruins Shetland Islands the subliminal wind
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Helen Mort

Helen Mort was born in Sheffield. Her first collection Division Street was shortlisted for the Costa Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize and, in 2014, won the Fenton Aldeburgh Prize. She is a Cultural Fellow at The University of...
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