the
GEORGE
MACKAY BROWN
website
extract: Would They Had Stay'd
by
Seamus Heaney
| Part 5 What George Mackay Brown saw was a drinking deer That glittered by the water. The human soul In mosaic. Wet celandine and ivy. Allegory hard as a figured shield Smithied in Orkney for Christ's sake and Crusades, Polished until its undersurface surfaced Like peat smoke mulling through Byzantium. © Seamus Heaney 2001 |
| from Electric Light a collection of poems published by Faber and Faber March 2001 |