Norman MacCaig

“The boat rides, sitting like a swan on the water.”

“A clumsy wave / Bruised the shoreline.”

“Frogs sit more solid than anything. They sit like buddhas.”

“Aunt Julia spoke Gaelic very loud and very fast.”

“By the time I had learned a little, she lay silenced in the absolute black of a sandy grave at Luskentyre.”

“So who's the monster? The shark? Or me?”

“He is the rock he sits on.”

“I hear her still, welcoming me with a seagull's voice.”

“When the shoormal, the tide-edge, is quietest, / A young seal, I suppose, came ashore.”

“Who possesses this landscape? The man who bought it or I who am possessed by it?”

“A toad is a jewel in a toad's head. A toad is a jewel in my head too.”

“What's the meaning of a Basking Shark? What's the meaning of a man?”

“Metaphor is the only way of saying one thing and meaning another.”

“The long, long time since the last glaciation / Still in the landscape, a visible memory.”

“She was winds pouring wetly round house-ends.”