Steve_Bamlett_blog

A beach is but a plateau on the edge
Of mountains in the sea, whose base extends
Down falling slowly through the upward force
Of water into deep chasms of time.
A poet praised raised beaches because they
Stood up to mark an earlier surface
Of time's causation of interactive
Tardy play between dry solid ground and wet
Fluidity of chance and Change. Nothing
Ever stays the same we name it. A beach
On Raasay in a small way a tribute
To mountains submerged before the Celts came. 

The raised beach at Raasay – subject of High MacDiarmid’s ‘On A Raised Beach‘ (1)

Some raised beaches make great spectacle
The high one creates shadows darkening
The one below. To prove that beach and sea
Are just surfaces, whose calm hides deep falls.

But greater song makes Raasay greater still
Than those New World steps-for-giants. Hugh sings
Soft but with authority of hard long
Words, which show that to be deep you need to look
Up, sometimes from the bottom of deep seas.

What artist poses the Earth écorché thus,   
Pillar of creation engouled in me?
What eburnation augments you with men’s bones,   
Every energumen an Endymion yet?
All the other stones are in this haecceity it seems,  
But where is the Christophanic rock that moved?   
What Cabirian song from this catasta comes? (1)

With love to you and Hugh

Steven xxxxxxxxxxxx

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(1) See Hugh MacDiarmid’s On A Raised Beach Available at: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46799/on-a-raised-beach