Stone Age Orcadians Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Scratch Orkney and she bleeds history
Neolithic settlers quit the face of the earth
Entered their world of stone, the portal of death

Their years, a series of obstacles,
Weather, wind, and rain
And the howling darks of Winter
Life snapped them off like sticks
To kindle stories

In the Tomb of the Otters,
All ages and genders, babies, mothers, fathers
With otters’ bones commingled
In the Tomb of the Eagles,
High on the Isbister cliff edge,
Buried with lords of the air

At Maeshowe, great Neolithic chamber
At the winter solstice
The setting sun enters the inner passage
Lighting the back wall like a trapped god
Maeshowe, stripped and robbed by the Vikings
Who carved a dragon, a serpent, a walrus
And runic graffiti:

'Thorfinn wrote these runes'.
'These runes were carved by the man
Most skilled in runes on the Western Ocean
With the axe that killed Gaukr Trandkill's son
In the South of Iceland'
'Haakon singlehanded
Bore treasures from this howe'.

Scratch Orkney and she bleeds history
The Ness of Brodgar ripped up all the history books
Stone Age slate roofs, painted walls and pottery
Now, the bones of the dead
Are tapped to release their secrets
Staved in skulls hint at truncated lives

At the Ring o' Brodgar, rearing from the heath
Lightning has felled two stones
A moment’s work, far quicker than their rising

Scratch Orkney and she bleeds history
Once a holed monolith stood in a field
North of the Standing Stones o' Stenness.
The Odin Stone. It stood for millennia,
Felled by a 'ferrylouper' patching up a byre

Now it’s low as the pebbles,
Looks up to the wind-chilled sunshine,
Orcadian Ozymandios
Isolation is the birthright of the idol

The Stane o' Quoybune at Birsay, the Yetnasteen in Rousay,
Are petrified giants. Every New Year’s day
Touched by the Gods, they walk.

The Stane o' Quoybune visits the Boardhouse Loch,
Dips its head in the water, drinks its fill.
Only those tired of life impede its progress
To wait for a year, to travel slowly over the startled land,
Think of it, after a twelve months tethered to moor
To roam, with the boon of movement
Like an ancient Juggernaut grooved and omnipotent
Slow, and unhindered, crushing all in its way

Scratch Orkney and she bleeds history
Wind and high tides stripped the grass from a mound,
Hidden for 40 centuries by sand
Protectively cocooned on the Bay o' Skaill,
In the West Mainland parish of Sandwick,
The village of Skara Brae

Eight houses, linked by passageways
Each house the same - a large square room,
A central fireplace, a bed on either side
A shelved dresser opposite the doorway.

Who’d want to wear dead mens’ clothes?
Who’d want a life, brutish and short and hard?
Which one of us would be tied
To the shadowy peg of Neolithic terrors?

We are the grave tourists
Voyeurs nosey-parkering into the past
Staring into the rough-hewn walls and chambers
Like the Vikings at Maeshowe,
None leave empty-handed, trinket laden