Hoy Sound - by
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Girl of the red-gold hair, far from you, o love, my aim; girl of the red-gold hair, far from you my sorrow. Tonight on the Sound of Raasay my hand is on the helm, listlessly the wind shakes the sail, my heart is dumb, aching for your music, today and tomorrow indifferent to my expectation. […]
It seems some Calvinist has been there / naming the island…
Sphagnum moss remembers. It recalls
/ the touchdown of each lark that tumbles
/ down upon its surface, the slightness of that weight
/ recorded…
Hearken, thou craggy ocean pyramid!
/ Give answer from thy voice – the sea-fowl’s screams!
/ When were thy shoulders mantled in huge streams?
/ When…
Edge out of the night
/ and contemplate one of nature’s
/ most sublime spectacles…
Exile I am, for to the last, I carry in my
/ heart the oak groves of Derry with their
/ white angels…
This page is a cloud between whose fraying edges
/ a headland with mountains appears brokenly
/ then is hidden again until what emerges
/ from…
Where sea and land meet, begin there.
/ The ampersand, the join, is a fault
/ which caused jagged peaks to rise –
/ from…
I prepared the package
/ for my friends in the states
/ the dangling earrings woven
/ into half moons black pearls glinting
/ like an eye in…
When you’ve lived a while within the sound
/ of surf and mosquitos and swirls of children
/
/ between blindingly green ridges of jungle
/ emitting…
When the explorer landed on the first island
/ no innocent, fearful or naked
/ men and women
/ peered from behind the vegetation
/
/ neither poisoned arrows…
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