So many Summers_Norman MacCaig – Voice of Assynt

redlightray — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 14:03:58 +0000

Having been on several trips to Assynt this year, the voice of Norman MacCaig has been stronger than ever in my head. MacCaig’s voice resounds like no other with the landscape of the North West of Scotland. Back at HQ in Glasgow, and looking through photos from the trips, a friend pointed out, after looking a picture I had taken of old boat near Achiltibuie earlier in the Summer, that the boat reminded her of Norman MacCaig’s poem ’So Many Summers’. They are words which seem to resonate with our experiences of the North West

So Many Summers

Beside one loch, a hind’s neat skeleton
Beside another, a boat pulled high and dry:
Two neat geometries drawn in the weather:
Two things already dead and still to die.

I passed them every summer, rod in hand,
Skirting the bright blue or the spitting gray,
And, every summer, saw how the bleached timbers
Gaped wider and the neat ribs fell away.

Time adds one malice to another one -
Now you’d look very close before you knew
If it’s the boat that ran, the hind went sailing.
So many summers, and I have lived them too.

You can listen to Norman himself tell it here.

I’d add, if you ever wanted an authentic insight into Scotland then there can be few better than listening to MacCaigs ‘A man in Assynt” while on a trip through Assynt….listen here, but pick the right time.

This and further recordings of Norman MacCaig can be found on the book and CD – The poems of Norman MacCaig.

Red Light Ray » boat

So many Summers_Norman MacCaig – Voice of Assynt