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.
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