Scatter the glowing seeds of fate

Here's an early George Mackay Brown verse, written in the 1950's, and as taken from the pictured 2017 reprint of his very first published collection:


The Road Home

As I came home from Kirkwall
The ships were on the tide:
I saw the kirk of Magnus
Down by the water side:
The blesséd brave Saint Magnus
Who bowed his head and died.
His shining life was shorn away,
His kirk endureth to this day.
As I came home from Kirkwall
The ships were on the tide.

As I came home from Birsay
A sower, all in tatters,
Strode, scattering the seed, immense
Against the sunset bars,
And through his fingers, with the night,
Streamed all the silver stars.
I watched him (leaning on a gate)
Scatter the glowing seeds of fate:
As I came home from Birsay
Against the sunset bars.

As I came home from Sandwick
A star was in the sky.
The northern lights above the hill
Were streaming broad and high.
The tinkers lit their glimmering fires,
Their tents were pitched close by.
But the city of the vanished race
Lay dark and silent in that place.
As I came home from Sandwick
A star was in the sky.

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George Mackay Brown (1921 - 1996)

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