Beyond the yards the water singsTo covered frame and lowered mastWhere yachts like birds with folded wingsAre waiting til the storms are past;Are waiting for the winter daysTo turn to suns of spring againWhen they will follow lovely waysBy misty loch and mountain chain. The green tide with its silver tongueTells tempting tales of foam […]
(an excerpt) Thrice with shrill note the boatswain’s whistle rung:‘All hands unmoor!’ proclaims a boisterous cry;‘All hands unmoor!’ the caverned rocks reply:Roused from repose aloft the sailors swarm,And with their levers soon the windlass arm:The order given, up springing with a bound,They fix the bars, and heave the windlass round;At every turn the clanging pauls […]
We’ve been playing unobserved
in the old brickyard, a place abandoned
to its toy-town railway, rusty iron tubs.
A filmpoem based on a poem by Jo Bell.
‘Lifted’ is a poem by Jo Bell; this film is a Filmpoem production for the Poetry Society in partnership with the Canal & River Trust as part of the Canal Laureate 2013 project.
He minded dem getting torpedoed i da White Sea,
hit blew da boo clean aff.
Da Bulksheid, he held though an dey limpit inta Arcangel,
whaur shu wis lashed ta da peir, an micht still be dere yet.
I am dark and smooth, polished by many hands, but the one hand that I loved has gone, so let me swing to the rudder’s motion, moored in the lee, alone. I knew the change of weather by his grip and felt his hunter’s passion like a tide, and the herring scales he rubbed on […]
O wad this braw hie-heapit toun Sail aff like an enchanted ship, Drift owre the warld’s seas up and doun, And kiss wi’ Venice lip to lip, Or anchor into Naples’ Bay A misty island far astray Or set her rock to Athens’ wa’, Pillar to pillar, stane to stane, The cruikit spell o’ her […]
A nighean a’ chùil ruaidh òir, fada bhuat, a luaidh, mo thòir; a nighean a’ chùil ruaidh òir, gur fada bhuatsa mo bhròn. Mi nochd air linne Ratharsair, ‘s mo làmh air an stiùir, a’ ghaoth gu neo-airstealach a’ crathadh an t-siùil, mo chridhe gu balbh, cràiteach an dèidh do chiùil, an là an-diugh ‘s […]
Something near to true
night-darkness. The children
are playing the Plinky-Boat –
a xylophone made
from a reclaimed yoal
/ I marched along the cliff
/ looking for insights to clear my thick head
/ and saw a submarine surfacing down in the Firth
/
/ rising
/ shaking…
Oor boat is rigged tae face the greater sea,
/ The day daws blithely whan we must set sail.
/ Hou aften hae we…
