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At
Burnmouth the door hangs from a broken hinge
And the fire is out.
The windows of Shore empty sockets
And the hearth coldness.
At Bunertoon the small drains are choked.
Thrushes sing in the chimney.
Stars shine through the roofbeams of Scar.
No flame is needed
To warn ghost and nettle and rat.
Greenhill is sunk in a new bog.
No bending woman
Blows russet wind through squares of ancient turf.
The Moss is a tumble of stones.
That one black stone
Is the stone where the hearth fire was rooted.
In Crawnest the sunken hearth
Lit many a story-tranced mouth,
Old seamen from the clippers with silken beards.
The three-toed pot at the wall of Park
Is lost to woman’s cunning.
A slow fire of rust eats the cold iron.
The sheep drift through Reumin all winter.
Sheep and snow
Blanch fleetingly the black stone.
From that good stone the children of the valley
Drifted lovewards
And out of labour to the lettered kirkyard stone.
The fire beat like a heart in each house
From the first cornerstone
Till they led through a sagged lintel the last old one.
The poor and the good fires are all quenched.
Now, cold angel, keep the valley
From the bedlam and cinders of a Black Pentecost.
© George Mackay Brown 1971
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