normanmaccaig

38d

"But that's excessive, and too little..." https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/54599045468/in/dateposted/

Norman MacCaig #poetry on a planter, Rose Street

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #photography #photographie #NormanMacCaig #ScottishLiterature #Art #Sculpture #RoseStreet

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14d

He picked up a pebble
and threw it into the sea.

And another, and another.
He couldn’t stop…

—Norman MacCaig, “Small Boy”
Published in The Poems of Norman MacCaig, Birlinn 2011

https://birlinn.co.uk/product/the-poems-of-norman-maccaig/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #NormanMacCaig

Text of a poem, dated July 1985

Small boy
by Norman MacCaig

He picked up a pebble
and threw it into the sea.

And another, and another.
He couldn’t stop.

He wasn’t trying to fill the sea.
He wasn’t trying to empty the beach.

He was just throwing away,
nothing else but.

Like a kitten playing
he was practising for the future

when there’ll be so many things
he’ll want to throw away

if only his fingers will unclench
and let them go.

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25d

It clamps itself to a rock, like a limpet,
And creeps up and down in a tide of people,
Hardly ever stranded in a tideless sabbath:
A pilgrimage place where all hymns are jubilant…

—Norman MacCaig, “A.K.’s Summer Hut”
published in THE POEMS OF NORMAN MACCAIG (Birlinn, 2009)

https://birlinn.co.uk/product/the-poems-of-norman-maccaig/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #NormanMacCaig

A.K.’s summer hut
Norman MacCaig

It clamps itself to a rock, like a limpet,
And creeps up and down in a tide of people,
Hardly ever stranded in a tideless sabbath:
A pilgrimage place where all hymns are jubilant.

The starry revolutions around it,
The deer circling in new foundations
Of old worlds, the immortal noise
Of the river ghosted with salmon - these

Are a bloodstream it’s a blood-drop in.
Such sharing. Such giving. See, at the window,
That silly chaffinch, practically talking Gaelic,
And the eiders domestic as farmyard ducks

And the lady gull yacking for her breakfast.
If I were a bethlehemish star I’d stand fixed
Over that roof, knowing there’d be born there
No wars, no tortures, no savage crucifixions.

But a rare, an extraordinary thing –
An exhilaration of peace, a sounding
Grace with trinities galore – if only
Those three collared doves in the rowan tree.

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