AS the season for spotting the first lambs of the year is upon us, here is a touching incident related by Kenneth Steven in his 2009 volume of Collected Poems, Island, published by Saint Andrew Press.
The setting is a Hebridean island, one assumes.
LAMB
I found a lamb
Tugged by the guyropes of the wind
Trying so hard to get up.
It was no more than a trembling
bundle
A bag of bones and wet wool
A voice made of crying, like a child's.
What a beginning, what a fall,
To be born on the edge of the
world
Between the sea and America.
Lamb, out of this island of stone
Yellow is coming, golden promises,
The buttery sunlight of spring.
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