Forgotten Ground Regained
Cape Wrath
Winner of the 1992 Cædmon Prize
Originally published in Withowinde 95, pp. 6-7, December, 1992.
Not wrath as in rage, but as reefing shipsfrom Viking hvarf, a veering of sailswhere turning tiderunners ‧ tracked southerlytoward the lush lowlands, allure of pastures.Aiming-point, then, intersectionmaps are made from; meeting of sea-pathswhere gannet-strike ‧ and stiff-winged gullattempt the turbulence, tracing white wakesbetween kyle and keel, cloud and breaker.
Nearby, the blunt, abrupt cliff-fallsdefine a finish, failure of land-mass:insult to isobars ‧ and Iceland’s tundrathe hurt behind ‧ of the high ness offersa bare buttock ‧ to the barren Atlantic,gained from glaciers ‧ to what good purpose?This neb remains, a node with its geos,guillemots and seals, its migrating flockswhose vagrant convenience ‧ these voes accommodateindifferently on the dull ‧ edge of the hour-glass.
One assumes easily, searching guide-books,some more spectacular spot – spout, rainbow, craglimitlessly colluding ‧ down the long approach;stacks striding ashore; a stave in the weatheror whale-song’s witness; wheel of sky-talons.Instead, one stands ‧ at an austerer somewhere:an end leading East, angles implying Westafford the furniture ‧ of a flat summit,a light-house lost ‧ to its unlucky prospect.
Appropriate, perhaps, that places one steers to,orients of arrival, don’t relish the intrusionwithdraw to a distance ‧ where days are smaller,views less violent, less vivid the sunscapes:the world here for humans ‧ is too hard to compass.And whatever they own ‧ absolutelyeyes make out ill, ail the inheritance;no one can seize completely ‧ the seen locale.
Turn away troubled, reattempt the route,pricked by disapointment, by prehistory.This meaningful wharf ‧ was meant for othersearlier and more avid, more energetic,whose justified journeys ‧ joined to an oceanwhose bounds were unbroken, whose bearings real,whose atlas included ‧ no anti-climax.
Comments of the Caedmon Prize Commitee
… some distinguished work … Englisc poets well demonstrated how suitable the style is for response to observation of the natural world, notably in some of the riddles; parts of Auden's The Age of Anxiety, which “Cape Wrath” at times recalls to one, have done the same in the modern language.
Copyright © Chris McCully, 1992
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