We were brought up in Bayble together. There are many years since then. There were ghosts at the edge of the dyke and heather on Hol, and the stone round it. And an owl in the wave, and a wind shaking Mary Roderick, and the hen being blown to the moor. At the tips of our fingers was the dream. But the wind took low Bayble away. The boats are coming towards uncultivated soil and the terrifying corn. What is that cloud with the scowl?
What is that cloud on the Muirneag? What is that Bible opening and the leaves with wind and rain on them? What is the shadow that is troubling me? Whence is the thunder of the river? Who put these fish on the park? That eagle is high above my memory. Whence are these winds, Derick?
There is a tall mountain, the mountain of poetry, there is a tall mountain, the mountain of life. Which is the more difficult, which is the higher? The white ghosts are waiting.
Their large eyes are laughing, the helmets of Aignish catching us. O my guilts, O my shame, streets of names, row after row of them.
Above the mountain, mocking, is the sun of the spirit, waiting. Above Bayble, above the horizon, above the wells of life.
Above the great lights of the streets, above Homer, Aberdeen, above the white moon of my friends, above the crayon books.
Above the autumn of nuts, and that tall tree that is waiting. Like hens scattered across moorland, those Greeks who taught us life.
Bayble and Athens, isn’t the compass strange and strict? How locked the lock is! There is a broken door in the glen.
Greek is on the broken door. There is a hawk on a chimney singing and saying: ‘You are laid by. But I will open you to the chest.’
O beautiful hawk, O key of fire, teach me your beautiful poetry, your beak as innocent as a child’s and as skilful as the work of intelligence.
In his beak he lifted Lewis and Bayble. In his beak he lifted me up. I saw Jupiter with its shadow steering heaviness over my sea.
And Mars and Venus going past, all the planets singing with the sweet choir of the thousand lights.
The Mod of the universe so sweet, bitter and sweet, that white choir, and the poet being crowned in the heavens, his face carved like a hawk’s and his wings open, star on star.
The cuckoo is in the hawk’s mouth. The chicken is in the crow’s mouth. (The sore wind is in a great hurry.)
I will not put on my silken coat, my summer coat, in the bad weather and my fool’s coat in pieces.
This century is throwing enough water at us like that great coloured tall bus that makes holes in the roads.
I will not leap from it, it is going too fast for me, it is putting the earth upside down. It is putting joy and hate on me, and my hair streaming to that wind, and my white face becoming a diamond against elegies and hymns, against the Iolaire and Holm, that song amongst the psalms, against the darkness and the blue and we now in our time with white lights, smooth lights on us, and Stornoway as small as a pin, but a golden hawk in that high sky like God, looking in a mirror.