You can be killed by wolf or man
Lightning, childbirth, fever,
Are also death-bringers
I look from the crannog
Over the peaty waters of the loch
The Lady Moon is wearing her white hood
Mice squeak in the roof-reeds
Rats scratch at the hazel stems
Of the crannog’s woven walls
My thoughts are like dark canoes
Circling and restless
Today I pounded grain
And helped a new-killed fox
From its coat of fur
On the shore, I gathered berries
The stone lay there like an egg laid by a storm
Now it nestles in my hand
As did the heart I plucked from the hare
After its blood spilled on the dewy grass
I sit by the fire and carve it,
Chipping away at the blank face of nothing
I give it knobs and spirals, a sense of rhythm
It rests my mind, this time of pattern-play
The cunning man has looked into the future
Mine is short and dark.
I shall throw the stone back to the field
My little worry-ball, my small tamed rock
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem