Sunday, 15 May 2011

The Sunday Post


Hullo ma wee blog,

This weeks Poem is dedicated to blogger pal Big Swifty, a keen poet and avid walker who loves the highlands and who is in Scotland at the moment raising funds for charity with a poetry performance in the most remote coffee shop in the country in aid of Leukemia research.

All the best Swifty.

Climbing Suilven. {1954}

I nod and nod to my own shadow and thrust
A mountain down and down.
Between my feet a loch shines in the brown,
Its silver paper crinkled and edged with rust.
My lungs say No;
But down and down this treadmill hill must go.

Parishes dwindle. But my parish is
This stone, that tuft, this stone
And the cramped quarters of my flesh and bone.
I  claw that tall horizion down to this;
And suddenly
My shadow jumps huge miles away from me.

Norman MacCaig.

3 comments:

The Gaelic Wife said...

Another good one! I need to pull out my atlas and find where Suilven is.

Big Swifty said...

Hey Alistair, thanks for the dedication, much appreciated. I waved at your village as I wizzed through on the train. I've blogged on my trip. Lochinver and Suilven were as far as I got, so the MacCaig was very appropriate. You must pop in to the Ceilidh Place in Ullapool, great bookshop of Scottish history and poetry, inc MacCaig of course. Cheers!

Alistair said...

GW - Suilven is in Sutherland.

Swifty - your very welcome. I hope it was successful.

The Sunday Posts 2017/Mince and Tatties.

Mince and Tatties I dinna like hail tatties Pit on my plate o mince For when I tak my denner I eat them baith at yince. Sae mash ...