John Burnside

To the make of a piper go seven years of his own learning and seven generations before … At the end of his seven years, one born to it will stand at the start of knowledge, and lending a fond ear to the drone, he may have parley with old folks of old affairs.

Neil Munro, ‘The Lost Pibroch’

We were talking about the hills when the land fell silent.

By that...

Die Musik bei einem Hochzeitszug erinnert mich immeran die Musik von Soldaten, die in den Krieg ziehen.

Heine

June will continue white, with outbreaks of rice; though, given the numbers, it’s difficult not to assume

that one of these persons now present will soon take the cure in a series of high-ceilinged rooms that was once

The Merchant’s House, at the heart of an Alpine...

There is no evidence that Rimbaud ever visited Scarborough. Graham Robb

At times, it feels like someone else’s dream, copious rain, when it comes, and the sense of Paraclete in every tongue of flame and hymnsong in the sky above the fen;

and nightfall, in the gaps between the hills, is quick and unrelenting, like the mouth that glides out from the ditch, no voice to tell what...

Quest’è ’l verno, ma tal che gioia apporte

Antonio Vivaldi

If you think she exists like that, you should think again. It’s winter now, and love is not the question.

Children see wolves through the trees and the beauty astounds them.Winter, they say; it’s winter, and joy is the question.

Mistake her for what you will: when she stands in your path at evening,...

for Lucas

There is too much light in the world to bear the weight of Euclid, too much fog, with shore birds, bright in the salt-water channels thinning the sands, the Black-Tailed

Godwit, the Curlew Sandpiper, named from the field guide, but still uncertain, still defiantly heraldic.

I’ve lived through days like these before and scarcely noticed, skylarks hidden in my sleeves,...