Mark Sealey
Broch
Too, your shoulders seem cold.
Hoarse sacks pulled in on you;
tied hard
around your back with dense, stretched, damp cord.
Stuff of the home-stone, and that hemp, blown
out
by the slightest
wound current.
The grey-oils in your neck cramp your neck,
slow down its wish to look round
as just a shudder, a flustering, blustering effort
lest
the sacks slip and show the wind a place to score.
Tugs and chatters at the door the wind restless, wet, listless.
Its snipe at our tall Shetland cone, home thrust our way
day, night, evening, midday, midnight, afternoon. January
heights, fill the ramparts around us.
Tonight inside spicker and spatter the sparks;
nuzzle the cough-puffs -
rough against and inside us, inside our stone stones.
Your black hand's hand dances - a croning stoat, or weasel,
up there wild, shivering, on the wall
while the evening blows heartless, fearless, steerless at the shore.
Tough doughs steam ready, plain on the slab at your knees messed with soot:
you reach and bite twice and cosset your other hand with less chill.
Woods at the top creak, shriek.
Gusts gather loudness off the shroud of th'Atlantic.
Shingle has to run child-races after the bully sea - moonless.
Your hopes drift down, round, out meanly, drawn on top of the sea-
they're frozen, forgotten - then fetched in pied waves' fright.
Page(s) 26
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