For the islands I sing

Just keeping the 'Orkney-theme' going - and here's another very early George Mackay Brown verse ...

... this one was written in the 1950's and is the opening poem from the pictured 2017 reprint of Mackay Brown's first published collection:


Prologue

For the islands I sing
   and for a few friends;
not to foster means
   or be midwife to ends.

Not for old Marx
   and his moon-cold logic -
anthill dialectics,
   neither gay nor tragic.

Not that extravagance
   Lawrence understood -
golden phoenix
   flowering from blood.

For Scotland I sing,
   the Knox-ruined nation,
that poet and saint
   must rebuild with their passion.

For workers in field
   and mill and mine
who break earth's bread
   and crush her wine.

Go, good my songs,
   be as gay as you can.
Weep if you have to,
   the old tears of man.

Praise tinker and saint,
   and the rose that takes
its fill of sunlight
   though a world breaks.

---

George Mackay Brown (1921 - 1996)

---