Islander - by
A few treeless meadows awaited your text
amid the overtones of Rackwick where next
to scriptory herds, you sermonised to shoals
how poetry’s an archipelago of souls:
A few treeless meadows awaited your text
amid the overtones of Rackwick where next
to scriptory herds, you sermonised to shoals
how poetry’s an archipelago of souls:
Where heather and Scots pines
Remind us of evenings past
When the world was less a place of wrong,
small oats rye bere barley
ripe harvest in late summer
a shallow ploughing
grazing and fallow in rotation
I remember the pale summer lightning that flashed on the purple
horizon,
Full-sweep like the sword-play of giants, the dark to bedeck
and bedizen
With gold for the path of the planets
I hae stuid an hour o the lown midsimmer nicht
/ til twal o the knock i the leelang glamarie-licht
/ by…
Summer grass is shoulder high once more, / higher than my sons will ever be.
The auld Assembly-rooms, whaur Scott
foregethert wi his fiers,
nou see a gey kenspeckle lot
ablow the chandeliers.
Come we to the summer, to the summer we will come,
For the woods are full of bluebells and the hedges full of bloom,
And the crow is on the oak a-building of her nest,
And love is burning diamonds in my true lover’s breast.
How do you like to go up in a swing,
/ Up in the air so blue?
/ Oh, I do…
Summer climbs the mountains.
Flowers overcolour and blanch.
Men leave the sun and sit,
tree-tented, by the cold creek.
Midday, just look around:
the heat raises the sand to a boil.
Life is nothing more than a myth
when summer comes to this land.
the crickets
/
/ one by one
/ whirring out
/
/ like flakes of light
/ from heaven
/
/ flickered at the
/ trees and grass
/
/ and sat
/ and sang
/
/ and something moved
/ something changed
/
/ the…
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