A July idyll from the pen of Norman MacCaig.  It can be found in his Collected Poems, edited by his son Ewen (Polygon, £25 hardback).

          A.K.’S SUMMER HUT

It clamps itself to a rock, like a limpet,

And creeps up and down in a tide of people,

Hardly ever stranded in a tideless Sabbath:

A pilgrimage place where all hymns are jubilant.

~

The starry revolutions around it,

The deer circling in new foundations

Of old worlds, the immortal noise

Of the river ghosted with salmon – these

~

Are a bloodstream it’s a blood-drop in.

Such sharing. Such giving. See, at the window,

That silly chaffinch, practically talking Gaelic,

And the eiders domestic as farmyard ducks

~

And the lady gull yacking for her breakfast.

If I were a bethlehemish star I’d stand fixed

Over that roof, knowing there’d be born there

No wars, no tortures, no savage crucifixions.

~

But a rare, an extraordinary thing –

An exhilaration of peace, a sounding

Grace with trinities galore – if only

Those three collared doves in the rowan tree.

                                                              July 1973