An Orkney poem, not from George Mackay Brown, but the lesser known Robert Rendall - described by Brown as ''a kind of

twentieth-century Elzabethan,'' for the range of his interests, from archaeology to conchology. This little English poem (his most admired are in the Orkney dialect) comes from An Island Shore: Collected Writings of Robert Rendall, edited by Neil Dickson,

The Orkney Press.

ANGLE OF VISION

By Robert Rendall

But John, have you seen the world, said he,

Trains and tramcars and sixty-seaters,

Cities in lands across the sea -

Giotto's tower and the dome of St Peter's?

No, but I've seen the arc of the earth,

From the Birsay shore, like the edge of a planet,

And the lifeboat plunge through the Pentland Firth

To a cosmic tide with the men that man it.