Les plus lus ▸
2013 in photos: British Isles
On an island, I looked for other islands:
smaller, emptier, round as up-turned
coracles barnacled to the shore.
I watched yachts catch the only sunlight
and thought of prized, greenstone axeheads
sunk in ceremonial lakes.
Smaller and smaller my longing grew
until it could almost fit in a watery pocket.
And yet these islands could not be kept:
they were Holy Islands, they were bird islands,
they were columns of cooled magma,
they were the skulls of ancestors
who had been killed three times—
once each for sky, land and water.
Here are their collars of bog iron,
their round houses roofed with turf.