PRAISE POEM FOR NORTH UIST
Blood of my blood and you are on the hill
of Eaval and you go
brightflame are the waves among the islands
and the gannet sound that comes on the sea
And you are on the cold moors of Liernish
and you go.
The straight line is the labyrinth memory
a steady unbearable decline from purging
winter.
Love of my love and you are stood near
the blue rooms of the sea
colour is multitude in the blizzard above
and in the bombs of air since that time
And you are on the wild coast of the Minches
and you go,
great is the joy in the hearts of those people
and the anxiety that is pain in their limbs.
It was to there I went and to there I shall
return if an image
takes me, if a blizzard takes my spirit, to
the eastern shore of a western island and
the placid edge of the sea
Love of my love and you are stood on the little
hill of Beinn na ‘h-Aire
and the sea goes to St. Kilda and Cuillin and Mull
and the sea rises through all the intricate stains
of your heart
And you go among the small houses of Claddach
strong is the kindness of those hurt people,
displacement of life and joblessness on those
shores :
they gave you food - though you gave them none.
And you are sat in the back room of the black
house,
damage and the smile of kindness on herself
and the burnt humour of his limping face;
they gave you food – though you did not ask.
And you are on Grimsay at the big house calm
in generosity, and the lady
of the house is like a young girl again with joy
at the coming of her daughters from America
and Lochcarron
And you are at the shielings towards Locheport
whoop of swan, heron and piled stone,
and their land is harsh and their townships
cleared and their children gone.
And you are among the people of Grimsay, the
bright roofs of their reticence
those who came back from the sea and those
who did not come back.
And they are coming, postmen lobstermen men
from the small shapes of the fields and the peats,
from the muds and the sands and the quicksand,
coming, coming, and which of them now will
return ?
If I were to sing and if I were to put music
to my song,
and to dance and drum the piled air, what
praise would I not put on Uist
What praise and what harshness would I not
put into my singing
measure of breath in the blizzard of these times
but when have I ever finished a song!
Rising in a perfect curve upon the world’s more
perfect curve
in silent anger through the coma of this world
the mountain buried upright by the sea calls
out to me.
My tongue moves in a dry mouth and I feel it
swell.
It is the full sea come steering down beating
song against generous hard cliff.
And if my mind were to go out to one man
generous in his justice
then I would see the whole island with its
tongue exposed on the burnt edge of song.
I know how song arrives, that it comes with
breath, that it is
a fire out on the waste, that the mouth is dry
and pain is laughter and I look for no excuse
in my divided words.
And I am standing on the white cliff, I am
on the other side of the mountain,
and the young cormorants slide into the lake,
sink and rise and sink in the exuberance of
their wingbeat.
And I am on the other side of the mountain
blood of my blood
there were no-one ever goes, a white sun only,
the lobster boat, the sheep man and the others
I must not mention.
I am among the moor crests of that marvellous
coast and I go
rock and timbers of the bandaged sun, and then
those friends who enter from the coma crests
of their sleeps.
And I am there and there and there, as if
from Tigharry to Bagh Morag,
as if from the coast of Lochportain to the strand
of Baleshare, North Uist was a city
Not an city of evil – but a haven – a city out
on the wide spaces of the moor
in the wide generosities of those hearts. Stand
up now from the slow dark sessions of your
sleep.
Stand at the fank, on the hill-slope and you can
see Carinish and the blight of Benbecula
(for the jobs it provided were not those that were
needed) you can see Heisker and Monach
and the whole spread of land and shattered sea
I am there as if Paible were full of yellow iris
amid the stooks of your happiness,
as if I could reach put and put hands on St. Kilda
as if the waves breaking white on white shores
were a sea rising about my heart.
Here I am far enough removed to reflect and
compose my mind,
to call up the single image of that wide earth,
and the broken thought of its dark shining
world.
Friends arrive, and they tread the abyss of
this silenced age.
The mountain wall is down and gone, the
shattered crown and raw pastures of the
slope.
I will not use irony in this poem, though it
copes and helps, that it won’t be a
fatal implement,
that I won’t be derelicted by a broken face.
I am stood on the lake, its steep and shattered
ice; I am stood on the rocks and
a rucked moon creases the neat full sea. I am
stood on autumn shores to watch the world
go into darkness.
What mists and shattered land and plausible fog.
I shall not use irony to character those people.
A face speaks, a numb sun, a slow stain that
moves across the sea.
I am stood on the rocks and out of the dense
fogs of the landing stage
come sliding the boats of my hoard and my
happiness.
And though I would have wished it to have been
a community beneath that mountain,
beneath that mountain and over the whole of Uist
from sea to air to sea and it wasn’t
It was to the mountain I went, stepping out and
in at the blue door - and
I would make this clear for those who wouldn’t
care to know :
It wasn’t the loveliness of that land, hill and
moor and inlet of the sea,
that took my mind and my mouth’s spirit and
made life’s compulsion strong in me
It was not loveliness alone that took the ship
of my song and my word horde
and spilt them easily, tilting snows across
a superb sky.
I searched the belly, the face, the mountain.
I asked with my eyes and heard the
‘Yes’ ‘Yes’ ‘Yes’
spring that follows the volcanic days of
winter
Damage and hurt, the measure of faith, and
edge of sight,
knowledge and speech put through my veins,
the smell of rain and generosity on a harmed
face.
I have stood on the height of Berneray with
the day coming over the sea.
I have taken the stone into my store : for
what more can I ask ?
I have stood on the hill of Eaval and have
gone and been lifted,
and felt the laughter and yielding sobriety of
the ground. To what more can I lay stress
and claim ?
And Uist has appeared to me like a boat, stern of
Griminish from the prow of Eaval,
and if it could drive us from pampered government
and if it could bring them to job-fulfilled shores –
but when would that be likely.
I have stood on the slopes of the hill, the huge
circle of its clear day,
the lucid algebra of its dialects, and sight that
is the labyrinth of a straight line.
And from the slight peak of Beinn na’h-Aire I
will be seeing Benbecula no longer a crater but
a set of kitchen gardens worked
around Nunton.
I am standing on the wide sands of those shores
and I am racing and I am still and
I am there
and the mountain still animates this dark-shining
world.
And it is to there I shall return, if peace or an
ice blizzard take my spirit,
if a face speaks, a numb sun. And I will walk in
the door between the shoulders of that house.
I will walk in the door, blue chalk and poise
of the sun,
between the shoulders of the island, its rich turf
of time, ruined laughter and speech, and the
raw procession of those lives.
Climbing snowfalls and fences I will go at
the mountain’s blade of bone.
Their sudden quiets and stillnesses, flame-birth
of compassion, the raw pastures of their bodies
and the fields.
And now they are coming - those who teach their
language and those who fish,
those who sheep or who shirk and those who wage
their lives against nothing, and those who return
and then go missing.
And I will not worry at my words’ extravagance
(if they are cool houses spilled round with
bright air)
only whether my words are real, only whether my
rawness will become too inward.
And I give no excuse for the blind division of
my words; nor do they
need any. Nor you, those generous people, the
mountain, whose banners are the sea’s and
they are mine.
Stephen Watts Spring 1976 or 1977 (Whitechapel)
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