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Stone

Alasdair Maclean

I

A long peninsula of solid rock,
upholstered every year in threadbare green.
Stones everywhere, ambiguous and burgeoning.
In Sanna ramparts of them
march around our crofts
but whether to keep cattle out or other stones
no man can say.
And at Kilchoan there were three houses
cropped from one field.
That was when I was a boy.
The masons left the pebbles
and there’s a castle now, waiting to be harvested.
God was short of earth when He made Ardnamurchan.


Alasdair Maclean

from From the Wilderness: poems (Gollancz, 1973)

Reproduced by permission of the author’s Estate.

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building crofting Highlands & Islands Placebook Scotland stone
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Alasdair Maclean1926 - 1994

Alasdair Maclean’s austere poetry captures the brutality of the natural law of the bleak Argyll homeland of his forebears, and his poetically charged prose work, Night Falls on Ardnamurchan, champions the old way of life there against inevitable change.
More about Alasdair Maclean

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