scotland
Sometimes things are firmly settled;
Sometimes a slow decline of population
Becomes a demographic rout,
And none are left, as when in dark times
Some remote village falls to an invader
And suddenly everyone is no more;
The houses are forlorn and empty,
The animals stand in their fields
Confused at the end of human order,
The crops are ungathered,
The fruit falls unappreciated from the trees,
Weeds claim the beds and barrows.
The things we do, or do not do
In one place are felt not only there
But elsewhere; what happens
At one time happens at other times too;
No one thing is beyond the influence of other things:
Small islands share the sea with large islands,
Share the clouds that sweep their mutual sky,
Share the rain and wind, unpredicted gales,
Share the songs and the things
That brought forth the songs.
Here the boats arrived, on time,
To take those things away.
Here, on this lonely rock, gannets
Countless in their multitude
Lay claim to a home, the circling seas
A reminder of the smallness
Of the land and of our lives.
The slopes are almost white with birds,
Nesting, arguing, caught in flight,
Swooping down ravines that end
In a churning sea.
These cliffs are on the edge of a great emptiness
Of water and sky, but the rocks themselves
Are all claimed by a noisy tenantry
Keen to attract or to repel,
Using different vocables for each.
Replete with fish they housekeep
Their nests, their perches giddy
Above a restless sea.
Flight is a constant
Obligation of birds,
Depends on the flow of air
And the winds that bring the air
From somewhere that is not here,
And will not remain for long;
So we, and the birds about us,
Are partners in impermanence.
To glide above the sea
On currents of moving air,
The wind, requires tiny
Adjustments of wings,
And a sense of height, born
Of having been raised
On the edge of a void,
Until suddenly, one day,
You launch yourself,
Become a bird.
Birds, we are told, create invisible boundaries,
Across water and land, mark out
Territory we cannot see;
They choose to be with others
Who see the world from the same angle
As they do, share habits;
So the skies here may at times
Be black with puffins,
Or white with gannets,
Obeying some ancient
Division decreed by deviation
From a common ancestor.
Gannets climb, sharp-eyed,
From airy heights they
See into the water below,
Watch the movement of fish,
Drop like stones,
Fall into the water
With the same splash
That Icarus made;
Unlike him, they surface.
The life of birds responds
To currents we do not see;
Birds must follow
Precepts decreed
A long time ago,
And immutable;
They have enviable freedom—
Air is unconstraining—
But biology holds them
To a life of fish and squabble.
And the sheep, too, were a necessary
Part of this life; they led their lives
Unaware of loneliness, unaware
Even of Lewis and the Uists
Across those miles of sea:
Now they cling to the impossible slopes,
Leading an angled life
That is nothing to do with
Any human husbandry;
Their owners left many years ago,
A full life-span ago, and more;
They remain, survive the gales,
To meet what few sheep meet:
A death from old age.
“Isolation,” you say, “is a condition
That reminds us of its own name,
And the roots of that name—isola, an island;
To be isolated is to be apart from those
Who are otherwise close to you,
But who, when they look towards you,
See only water, as you see water
When you look towards them;
Isolation, though, enables the ear to hear
Those sounds that are often drowned out:
The sound of the heart, the sound of the blood
In the veins; the sound of the wind’s breathing,
The sound of still water, unsuspected of movement,
The sound of love and affirmation.”
From the hills of Lewis
Hazy on the horizon an island
May be spotted; blue, washed
Like a watercolour, fading,
Reappearing briefly, and then
Gone once more, like signals
From the ether, faint messages
From afar, lost in static,
Barely received, only half understood:
People lived here once…Their life was birds
And the eggs of the birds they hunted…
In the winter months, short days
Of gales…but in summer, the nights
That were almost days…Remember
Us and the place in which we lived,
Our names, the way we looked,
The words and sounds we left behind.