We came to Kilmartin across the stone bridge
in the dip past the village, where you observed
the fish and the compass points in your poem,
the needles of them in your Gaelic,
a small bridge and a necessary bridge
on the journey from modern day Glasgow
to the culture the church had to cover,
sculpted stones the church wished to better,
heaped mounds no one could pretend
has as little significance as needle-points,
but the people who lived here will not die,
their raised cairns, their tall pillars,
their alignments in thoroughfares
between higher hills, their spells
still cast over visitors, residents
living for a large part on their lucre,
the people who lived here are adamant,
they visit us out of our past, of our ancestors:
theirs were our grandmother's jet beads
and her copper and beakers, shapes probably
not from Ireland, nor birdsong on eagles' bones
but just that smidgen behind our own memory
where our language does not go,
so we'll hear the poem of our history
possibly in p-Celtic and leave it there.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem