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  • Wound
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Wound

George Gunn

Take this wound that I offer you
keep it close & love it well
for the storm may run at Faraid
the surf turn white Loch Eriboll
but no wind can blow an organised people
across the unknowable ocean
or drown their history in the swell

we are cut & yes we bleed
but we are time & headland & will heal
forging our strength by Naver & Torrisdale
tempering our own steel for our own knife

so drink from this cup
the sea on your lip will tingle
the vast democracy of life


George Gunn

from After the Rain: new and selected poems 1991-2016 (Kennedy & Boyd, 2018)

Reproduced by permission of the author.

Tags:

identity the clearances
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George Gunnb.1956

George Gunn was born in Thurso in 1956 where he still lives. He has been a deep-sea fisherman, a driller for oil in the North Sea, a journalist, playwright and poet.
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