Centurion

Moya Cannon's Sheep: Trust and Manipulation

Here are two poems by Moya Cannon that I just found and do admire:


SHEEP AT NIGHT IN THE INAGH VALLEY

For Leo and Clare

Maybe the dry margins draw them,
or grass, sprouting among limestone chippings --
they are here, as always,
on the edge of the tarmac
on a bend.

They shelter under the clumped rushes --
white bundles in the night --
their eyes are low green stars,
caught in the trawl of my car's headlights.

Occasionally one hirples across the road
but, usually, they stay put
and gaze at the slowed-down car.

I envy them their crazy trust.


WEANING

He carried a lamb
up over the bog to the hill,
took sugar from his pocket and let it lick.

The clean tongue searched the crevices of his hand,
then he set it down to graze.

It would never stray from that hill,
tethered by a dream of sweet grass.

--by MOYA CANNON


Respectfully borrowed from
Carrying the Songs
Carcanet Press Ltd
Manchester, UK
2007

Orkney Kine

Orkney kine are not the hairy, furry Scottish cattle that one expects.  They are multicolored, or of various colors, not the ruddy shade you may expect.  And, cattle and sheep alike lie down (lay down--what's that rule?) to avoid the worst of the wind in ways that I am not used to with livestock.  I mean, some sheep and cattle flatten themselves like cats or dogs in the sun.

Wool-Gathering

Yesterday's product of idle hands:

just hanging out in the studio,
watching clay -- figures and bowls -- dry . . .
I pulled out a bit of wet clay for play's sake,
and this fellow made himself apparent,
made himself present.

The Gang Is On The Way

Soldate clay, still drying.

John Buchan: "A Barndoor Fowl"?

Here are two paragraphs from the very end of the first chapter --"Lost Gods"-- of John Buchan's The Island of Sheep, published in 1936, that I'm finding resonant.  Richard Hannay, of The Thirty-Nine Steps, is our narrator, and he's reached his fifties . . . .


I continued my journey -- I was going down t the Solent to see about laying up my boat, for I had lately taken to a mild sort of yachting -- in an odd frame of mind.  I experienced what was rare with me -- a considerable dissatisfaction with life.  Lombard had been absorbed into the great, solid, complacent middle class which he had once despised, and was apparently happy with it.  The man whom I had thought of as a young eagle was content to be a barndoor fowl.  Well, if he was satisfied, it was no business of mine, but I had a dreary sense of the fragility of hopes and dreams.

It was about myself that I felt most dismally.  Lombard's youth had gone, but so had my own.  Lombard was settled like Moab on his lees, but so was I.  We all make pictures of ourselves that we try to live up to, and mine had always been of somebody hard and taut who could preserve to the last day of life a decent vigour of spirit.  Well, I had kept my body in fair training by exercise, but I realized that my soul was in danger of fatty degeneration.  I was too comfortable.  I had all the blessings a man can have, but I wasn't earning them.  I tried to tell myself that I deserved a little peace and quiet, but I got no good from that reflection, for it meant that I had accepted old age.  What were my hobbies and my easy days but the consolations of senility?  I looked at my face in the mirror in the carriage back, and it disgusted me, for it reminded me of my recent companions who had pattered about golf.  Then I became angry with myself.  'You are a fool,' I said.  'You are becoming soft and elderly, which is the law of life, and you haven't the grit to grow old cheerfully.'  That put a stopper on my complaints, but it left me dejected and only half convinced.

--John Buchan, The Island of Sheep