St Kilda

Old pictures: the last post boat off out of view,

Clear of the shingle beach and Village Bay,

Past the stacks, to the mainland, all smoking away

As the black peats, dying, for all that still burn

And they’ll mist and burn out your eyes if you try

To stay and look at them there, choking, long enough.

And the old black household Good Book, only

In the Gaelic (of the Reverend Kirk), preserved

For generations immemorial like butter

In a cutaway bog or a cleit or kist, they know

Off by rote sing-song they’ve all gone, every last man –

MacDonald, MacKinnon, MacQueen, Gillies, Ferguson –

And left forever by the inglenook beside the hearth

In each single home on the street, wide open,

To the St Kilda mouse and Troglodytes hirtensis –

An ginealach sin uile; gun tèid iad a-mach às an tìr;

Gach mac a bheirear (and, for crying out loud,

Where on earth else?) – at the beginning of Exodus.

Posted: 5 August 2011, 3:45pm
Tags: poetry