58/100 Stop, travellers

Stop, travellers.   The way goes no further.

Stop.   Beyond this moor the tracks of wolf and of creatures that have no name.

[from ‘The last gate’, George Mackay Brown, The wreck of the Archangel]

57/100 apocalyptic beasts

But Amos crossed the hill

Certain that arks, pillars of salt, apocalyptic beasts

Would any moment

Cover the boring landscape.

‘[from ‘Fundamentalist’, George Mackay Brown, ‘Travellers’]

56/100 Master of the granite hewing

This mason, master of the granite hewing,

squaring, last pure chiselling, cold star glitters,

‘There must be a cool place, infirmaria,’

[‘Architect’, from the Foresterhill sequence, George Mackay Brown, from 'Selected Poems 1954-1992']

55/100 Leif plucked grapes on that shore.

I think there may be land further west

Only the eye of the sun sees it,

An Icelander, Leif,

Plucked grapes on that shore.

[from ‘Tryst in Egilsay: Helmsman, George Mackay Brown, 'Selected Poems 1954-1992']

54/100 ‘spinning wool on her wheel’

‘Good’ said the wife at the hearthstone

spinning wool on her wheel.

[from ‘Anne Bevan, Sculptor, Hills, Woolcraft, Stone’, George Mackay Brown Following a lark]

53/100 put honey in his mouth

I am not too ugly a girl

I long to put honey in his mouth,

I would draw a comb through the blown corn of his hair.

[from ‘2, The Girl, One Summer in Gairsay Isle’, George Mackay Brown Following a lark]

52/100 The forge flames

The forge flames, the hammerings, glowings,

End one way -

A cold nail on an anvil.

[from ‘Hill Runes’, George Mackay Brown, 'Selected Poems 1954-1992']