The Sunday Post

When he speaks a small sentence,
he is a man
who presses a plunger that will
blow the face off a cliff.

Or: one last small penstroke -
and the huge poem rides
down the slipway, ready
for enormous voyages.

He does more than he does.
When he goes hunting
he aims at a bird and
brings a landscape down.

Or he dynamites a ramshackle
idea - when
the dust settles,
what structures shine in the sun.

'Hugh MacDairmid'
By Norman MacCaig.
1962