KENNETH Steven writes with imaginative insight about the highlands and western islands of Scotland.

Here he trains his eye on our mysterious forebears. The piece is included in Island, his Collected Poems, first published by Saint Andrew Press in 2009.

THE PICTS

They do not speak to us

But stare down the centuries, dark as stone;

Leave only hints and flickers of themselves

In riddles of painted birds and battles,

Little whispers

Embedded in the place-names of the east.

If one day we make a machine

That unpicks the sounds asleep in wood and stone

We'll dig for words in the ochre fields they left -

Fragments, thin as flints -

Half-heard and muffled words

To be gathered in baskets, brought back

And rebuilt like a broch, to interlock

So we can re-enter the world of their time

And listen to them at last.