simonhlilly

A RING OF ISLANDS

I
(following tracks)

All night travelling northwards, sleepless, restless. The train moves through lands devoid of scale, devoid of habitation. It seems like the edge of things. The edge that has been forgotten, left for later to finish off. Or maybe, more likely, it is a land that speaks an unfamiliar language, whose nuances are overlooked, whose poetry and rhythms fails to impress a stranger. But relentless in itself, offering no compromise. It is you, after all, that has wandered here, mapless, without names or guide. Learn to see in a new scale, a new magnification.

desert
after
desert.

the night has passed.

the clouds cast down
a movement of light and shade.

making footsteps and landmark.

were it nor for those distant hills
i should not care
to move another step –
these barren moors.

II
(leaving Caithness)

sick at heart
the land ends.
this grey swell.

A thunderstorm on the quayside, the ferry begins its journey. I am still heading north, grey in grey on grey. Grey swell. Grey sky. That boat engine smell – hot metal, oil, polish and salt tang, like the linger of old cooking, somehow sticks in the hollow chambers of taste and smell, warm, acrid but reassuring. The smell of motion.

at first
the darker hints
of cliff and shore
still allow for orientation

deserted now
we cross a circle of mist

forever the radius
wavering green behind:

the wake of a moving centre.

lightning teases
each eye’s
corner.

the black waves hiss
as if the rain
were heat.

It is only the throb of the engines, the vibration of propellers, the rock and roll of the deck that suggests we move at all in this low cloud and encompassing mist. The storm is all around, a still storm of heat and midsummer, the ghost of a storm, tangling the edges of things.

III
( motionless)

And now the circle of the horizon has bound all movement. Forever the centre, I shall roam changing paths of cloud-cast sky.

the sky moves
the land moves
the motionless wanderer.

IV
(Hoy)

Hoy raises itself from the still ocean. The mist clears in front, closes back behind.

remembering
olden times,
perhaps.
guardian mist,
guardian rock.

The Old Man – a rudder holding the isle seawards, an anchor to stop the land sinking into the endless mists. Lightning licks the land in front and to the side. Clouds hold converse with the cliffs of Hoy. Mist hides their roots.

to and fro
errand seabirds
clip the water’s shadow.

V
(Stromness)

Walking through the grey harbour town, now and then I catch the gossip. Old men can recall its equal – the island storm. There is hardly time for a makeshift camp. The storm returns, rolling boulders around the horizon.

the sound of raindrops
on canvas:
like fire in dry tinder.

VI
(unfolding)

All day I was moving across hills, along loch-sides. A low land unfolding. the sky is in every pool, around every corner. The cry of the curlew. The oystercatcher clacks its beak.

as if to hold
earth and sky together:
the stones in lines,
in rings.

Steness:
stones
skylarks
wind at my neck
wet toes.

Here time does not pass. It is covered then uncovered by storm and sand. Time slips around the horizon but does not approach. The oldest of signs, the footsteps and marks, the minds, the eyes, the dreams, rooted, layered. We are a tide, we are its debris, its story. Orkney, the first place where the great stones were measured and placed. On islands, time cannot ebb away. It has nowhere to go, and so it remains.

VII
(the mill)

an old nest
on the rusty pulleys –
mill by the sea

Two querns in wooden frames; troughs draped with frayed netting; a tangle of metal binding. Frames for holding, syphons for pouring. The ghost of a boat. Dulling the crash of waves, the smell of cool, damp rock walls. Down a flight of stairs where the sea waves echo, I found a seabird’s skull, sharp as a needle, delicate as eggshell.

VIII
(lost)

from Skara Brae
to Yesnaby
the mist-hidden cliffs
i could not reach.

this trackway, too,
ends in the high fields.
the seabird’s cries.

IX
(floating)

all day,
a dream.
watching them swing
this way then that –
small boats
on the breath
of the tide.

X
(outskirts)

Camping on the outskirts of this town, waiting for the rain to stop. Even in my dreams, the cold wanderer. I took a walk along the twilit shore of midsummer night.

three swans.
the ship in the bay
glittered with lights.

XI
(bright day)

the wind
is the ladder
on the horizon
that those tall clouds
climb.

All sunny morning I took the road from Kirkwall to Finstown. Bright, green fields of grass. An easy road.

step daintily,
mister bull –
your buttercup meadow!

XII
(circles)

I wanted to visit the graves of the ancient, buried in the coastal cairns. The gate was locked, so I climbed up onto the hill behind in a melancholy state of mind, despite the morning sun and the smell of growing heather.

my careless glance
scattering rabbits.
the heather hillside.

Mine was the cry of the curlew, not the spiraling song of the skylark. Finding some scattered bones of rabbit, I arranged them into a circle on the ground.

circle of bone
circle of stone
circle of sky

the sun’s circle eye
the skylark’s hymn
the curlew’s lament.

XIII
(noon)

towards noon.
islands
moored in the bay.

fields and farms
lying still in the breeze.
every cloud
has its hill.
every hill
gathers its own cloud.

only me
and the curlew,
restless.

XIV
(island hopping)

a mist of islands.
a single gull
above our stern

Islands are all around. A few fields, stone walls, a bank of shingle drift, one or two roofs, is all there is between the sea and sky.

an arc of green
where the wind changes tune
through the roofless crofts.

As if one morning they had all slipped away, a handful of fields drifting with time and tide out into the ocean, found a spot, and stayed.

XV
(cradled)

How easy it is to watch the gulls weaving on the wind at the stern, or to follow the counterpoint of seething waves spiraling from under the bows and feel the slow shifting weight from one foot to the other. Marking time in waves and tides.

the sea
stretches, seethes
and forgets
our passing.

a ring of islands.
the gull at our stern
has found a companion.

XVI
(solstice)

Returning to Stromness I cooked an evening meal and then wandered aimlessly along the coast. Although I had to rise early next morning, planning to take a boat to Hoy, I was unable to leave such a beautiful evening. Despite the hour, it was still very light, and a deep silence filled both myself and the land through which I walked. Resonance was everywhere. Great wellings up of deep emotion when I beheld the waves on a small foreshore; the trawler, its mast-light flickering, heading out to sea; the hills and cliffs of Hoy across the water almost melting into the deep stillness of oncoming night; young lambs bleating on the hillside; mother ducks with their young by the shore.

this evening, too, lingers,
unwilling to leave
your summer stillness,
Islands of the far north.

on the shore
wave upon wave
only deepens the silence,
Islands of the far north.

XVII
(gift)

soon to depart,
at last
the tune
of something
framing this land

the stranger
knows a wholeness
to which
he does not belong.

XVIII
(journey)

opening my tent:

the sea breeze
busy kindling
today’s sun.

the cliffs of Hoy.
but revolving
in my mind
thoughts
of homecoming.

XIX
(returning)

in evening haze
across the bay
the hills of home
bring little solace.

returning home
i have left
too much of me
in the islands
of the for north.

XX
(distance)

desiring solitude
desiring solace,

let me gaze
deep
into your eyes,
lady,

satisfied.

**

Fragments of a journey to the Orkney Islands, recorded midsummer 1980, retrieved and reframed, spring 2013.