Stac Donna (Poems on St Kilda)

1/Black house, disappearing.

 

Black house, book of earth scripted to the soil,

The cutter, the cotter, cut down

Sinking to the land, the hands that gave it

Withdrawing favour.

 

Fallen house with the harvest,

Brittle bones of stones recast

The humble earth retreating that once

Won out over storms.

 

 

2/The soaring heights of Stac Lee.

 

Carved canine soaring above the waves,

Made to gnash the futility of timber,

The sons of thunder’s boast of boat,

Crest of gannets rising in triumph.

 

Picking the sorrow of the incomplete,

Stranded lives fading on the wreck,

Brother to Boreray:

Desolate.

 

 

3/The fowler’s snare. 

 

The firm grip of death

The walk of life for the men,

The rope their call and response,

To catch the birds

 

Flyting in flight,

Carrying the captives

Home to the black, the bubbling pot

Their last flight

 

 

4/Dun.  

 

Broken southern tip

Brown-out facing the mainland,

The grip of power

Held in the rocks

 

 

5/Mullach Mhor.

 

Dark-bruising shadow fading

With the sunset sundown,

The deep shape of Mullach Mhor

Rising up and swallowing Gleann Mor

 

 

6/Stac Donna.  

 

The northern queen of the headland,

The silver cloak of spray

Does nothing to remove

Her isolation

 

 

7/Spinning the fates.

 

Fine yarn spinning, lines from mainland changing,

Treads and threads running, yarn spinning to tweed,

Ancient ships gone to ground, drowning,

The spinning rhythm of the clacking board,

Propped on a three-legged stool

 

Threads continuing to the mainland,

Their new lives in Morvern

The shadow side of helping,

The currency of their new life

Cashiered.

 

 

8/Pews. 

 

Pews stretch in lines, orderly,

Regular and corporal,

Corporeal as war graves

Stretching from pulpit to the door

To bolster the remnant

 

 

9/The last wedding on St Kilda.

 

Plainsong, there in black and white,

Scree on the hill rising behind their cottage,

The smoke, the lum now theirs,

Four years on the clock.

 

Black: dirt of his labour,

Black house buried beside them,

A stonebuilt street rising

For a short island time, so short.

 

White: the film of her dress

The coming of cumulus,

Drifting veil

Lifting in passing.

 

 

10/Cleit.

 

Roundhouse, smokehouse, storehouse,

Dry gateway to the fallen feathers,

Rough hope hanging, coarse and coiled,

Soft serpent,

Tongue cleaved to the last.

 

Molehill to a mountain,

Broken door grinning open

Splinters as fangs,

Moss covering the walls

A scalp claimed by time and the west.

 

 

11/Eclipse.

 

Moon in alignment

Blots out the sun for a day,

Not just for a day but on and on,

A stained silver sickle hangs over the emptiness.

 

Silent the shoreline

To echoes of day trippers

Become lotus-eaters

Now Odysseus has returned.

 

 

12/Prometheus Bound.  

 

Visitors, from another world

Bringing fire to mortals:

Yet it is not they

Who stand in agony on the rock

 

 

13/Rainbow Warriors.

 

Natives for centuries,

Brought down to fly no more

The siren call of the rope

Their undoing

 

Vivid splash of the painted beaks

Offsets the Victorian mourning

Of their overcoats, undercoats

The plainer white, butlers in service

 

Foreseeing the end of the line,

Past puffing steamers, the fall of man

The harsh, the harrowing call of the wind

Answers to no-one

 

 

14/Archipelago.

 

Beaten sickle,

Broken blade gleaming

Sharp in the callused hand

Of time that is past

 

 

15/The Factor.

 

Knowing glance of locals,

Payment in kind, produce

Value diminishing by the year,

Trickling out to sea

 

 

16/Cliffs of Conachair.

 

Woman and boy burdened,

Proud of their heritage, the dead bodies

Stiffening in their hands,

Preparing to eat

 

 

17/Quadrille.  

 

Prows lifted high, carried as a totem:

Care from the weather, the boats

Lifted up along the quay, waiting

As wooden ladders, safe from waves.

 

The seamen take their partners,

A vow of rhythm in ropes,

Stepping past the stairs to the sea

Making and keeping the book of the dry.

 

When sea swirls upward

They dance past the waiting arms of seaweed,

Avoiding the final embrace

Of the downward dead today.

 

 

18/Handlooms.

 

Placid eyes of the Soay sheep

Shedding from their coats

Re-clothed the islanders,

Spinning in infinity

 

Click and spin and weave and make

Soft harvest from the backs of these

Cut with a penknife,

Released for summer

 

 

19/Quernstone.  

 

The daily grind

Coming full circle

Oats ground down

For diminishing returns

 

Women gone from the picture,

Men kneel to do homage

To the hot hub of meal

Slow fists grinding

 

 

20/Tetanus Infantum.

 

Such little shadows succumb

To the sharp fall of time,

Marking time in the long grass

Where time shall be no more

 

 

21/Psalm: Martyrdom.  

 

Giving out the line,

Voices catch in the aisle

Each line repeated, hammered home,

The song strong where it is weak

 

The tide of Solway rises

Submerging all before it,

The last swell of harmony

Washing out to sea