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Thursday 11 October 2012

99/100 The Westray monks




Sixteen walkers about the church,
Heads bare as stone,
Long striders, deep-voiced, rough-handed.
‘Brother wind, gentle sister raindrops’ –
That’s what they call this black whirl of storm.
They haven’t a sword between them.
Here they come, in procession
Demure and harmless as girls

[v.3, Twelfth-Century Norse Lyrics of Rognvald Kolson, Bard and Saint, George Mackay Brown, from Selected Poems 1954-1992]

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