Orkil the Poet On His Landing In Skye

Strange the ways of sea going men

upon landing, hopes sharp as steel

we brought to the natives,

fierce the feeling on new land to win

beneath our strong feet,

who had been too many weeks at sea.

Now here on the strand was I, no warrior,

storm brought just the same,

in the strange island we sought to claim,

coming one week after the headstrong

wild blooded first soldiers set foot here.

 

Dazed I was and ocean sick, and more so

but the still fresh scent of spilled blood

keener than brine in the nostrils.

That boatload that came first still

drunk in the dune from their kills,

first hounds that tasted foreign prey.

High and hell dark the Cuillin mountains loom,

and harsh the cries of women heard,

fleeing there, away from where

we slew their men.

 

Sea eagles pipe warning overhead

that we will not listen to.

Dark silver eyes of tarns glint

in the high hill corries,

gods of the newly dispossessed

that we despised and led to slaughter.

The horned herds bellow, sheep moan

in the meadows for something change.

No less did the strange monks gather

at the first onslaught,

meekly lined up on the shore,

silent in death except for soft Latin

when the Northmen's storm descended.

 

No pearls in the sands for poets like me

when I landed, and barely bread,

but heedless men drunk in boasting,

who will learn loss only when

their hands can spill no more blood.

This place one more island only

in the conquering adventure

that will not end.

 

Keen eyed I am, but not welcome,

a tongue I have that can hurt kings

and killers all, so none can

act against me.

Yet their unease places me with the

weak, the crippled, and the man fool

who falls to his knees on the beach

and begs mercy of the spirits

of this place.

The wild men laugh at his tears.

 

Then I rose and spoke 

words to still them all.

'The sorrows of poets are strange,’

I began my long song.

And then I turned seaward,

knowing there would

be no laughter tomorrow.