Island on the Rim
Foula, fugl-oy, island of fowls.
For every woman’s face
a thousand birds
hoop their stars round the rock.
Salt stoops. No crop
will grow where it stings.
Foula, or Thule perhaps,
when Julius Agricola
scanned the heave, his men
sallow, gripped to the grey,
as its glimpsed shape
swam the world’s rim.
There and not there:
not this world but the other.
God the sculptor
with his hammer of storms,
daggered silver. Shaping
the Sneug, Kame, Hamnafield.
There and not there,
banded sandstone
abrupt from the sea.
Now substance, now mist,
a lioness or ghost
just making a meal of the sun.
For every woman’s face
a thousand birds
hoop their stars round the rock.
Salt stoops. No crop
will grow where it stings.
Foula, or Thule perhaps,
when Julius Agricola
scanned the heave, his men
sallow, gripped to the grey,
as its glimpsed shape
swam the world’s rim.
There and not there:
not this world but the other.
God the sculptor
with his hammer of storms,
daggered silver. Shaping
the Sneug, Kame, Hamnafield.
There and not there,
banded sandstone
abrupt from the sea.
Now substance, now mist,
a lioness or ghost
just making a meal of the sun.
Page(s) 39
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