The Porcelain Cliff - by
Dust is curious. / Dust is thirsty.
Dust is curious. / Dust is thirsty.
I saw you from my window, Margaret.
/ I was watching the seagulls swooping the sky.
/ The seagulls, I was telling myself, know
/ today…
‘The going is harder’
/ he advised me
/ ‘as one gets older.’
/ I didn’t believe him.
/ After all, he was old
/ and the old are like…
As by barren trackway
/ on a mountain crest
/ with view of scree and corrie,
/ ridge and col,
/ a traveller might pause,
/ take bearings, cast
/ in…
Glaciers, grinding West, gouged out
/ these valleys, rasping the brown sandstone,
/ and left, on the hard rock below –
/ the ruffled…
But in the climbing ecstasy of thought,
/ Ere consummation, ere the final peak,
/ Come hours like this. Behind, the long defile,
/ The steep…
Fon chàrn, ghabh iad air falbh
/ gus an tug iad a-mach cliathach Beinn Ghulbain
/ ri marbh na h-oidhche.
/
/ Rinn iad iad fhèin a…
If ye went tae the tapmost hill, Fiere
Whaur we used tae clamb as girls,
Ye’d see the snow the day, Fiere,
Settling…
A visit to the island of Colonsay,
/ Inner Hebrides, April 1987
/
/ There are other lives we might lead, places we might get…