88/100 ‘a ship of Irish monks’

We gave heads and tails of monkfish

To a ship of Irish monks

They gave us a blessing

Cleaner and brighter than a jumping salmon.

[from Trinity: Sailing to Greenland: Monkfish, George Mackay Brown, ‘Travellers’]

87/100 'languid as snowflakes'

Dark water.   Ropes glittered with night frost.  

The ship lingered, languid as snowflakes.

[from Voyage:  The months, George Mackay Brown, The wreck of the Archangel]

86/100 Congregate ghosts

‘What happened here?  

 Congregate ghosts, among the weathered and cracked stones.  

 Take my mouth, speak.

[from Four kinds of poet, 3, George Mackay Brown, ‘Travellers’]

85/100 Sagas of salt and stone

Sea, old sculptor, carves from the western ramparts

Stack and cave and skerry

Sweep harpist, with sagas of salt and stone.

[from ‘Haiku for the Holy Places, George Mackay Brown, ‘Travellers’]

84/100 Erling glides in a trance

And as for thy brothers, one

Has a skull square as an ox,

And Erling glides in a trance

Through bell and psalm and secret,

A cold mouth in the godstreams.

[from ‘Rose’, The five voyages of Arnor, 3, Viking Testament, George Mackay Brown, 'Selected poems 1952-1992']

83/100 And tatters of blood

I bought the horse in Dublin.

Seven times

It reared against horn and shield-wall

Now that it's hide and bone, that nag,

And tatters of blood

I am walking back to the town.

[from 'Orkneymen at Clontarf, AD 1014, George Mackay Brown, 'Selected poems 1952-1992']

82/100 - our labouring urgency

The sun sets on our labouring urgency.

We hurry to find an inn

with fire and bottle, fish and bread.

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

81/100 The forty-fifth stone

What broke from the cloud?

Rain, sun, the hawk.

A stone walks under a cloud slowly.

[from Brodgar Poems, George Mackay Browm, 'Selected Poems, 1954-1992]