quinag

56d

The grey roots circle thee, who never knew
At any hour within thy travels lone
A human shape but mine…

—Olive Fraser, “The Adder of Quinag”
published in THE WRONG MUSIC, @canongatebooks 1989

Another poem for World Snake Day 🐍

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/adder-quinag/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #snake #snakes #naturewriting #naturepoetry #Quinag #Sutherland #Highlands #WorldSnakeDay

The Adder of Quinag
Olive Fraser

The grey roots circle thee, who never knew
At any hour within thy travels lone
A human shape but mine. Thou com’st to view,
Wild, unafraid, what stands beside thy stone
And gazes on thee in thy wilderness
Of fifty miles. What thinkst thou of me,
For I am of a race thou could’st not guess
Would murder all thy hapless innocency?

O mountain, take thy small heart back again
And keep him in thy care when I shall go,
Unvisited by all things but the rain,
The hurtless sunbeams, and the winds that blow
For ever in his moors. O let him hold
No intricate memory of that being who stood
Just once by his wild beauty, and did fold
Him with a blessing alien to my blood.

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