the mild mad dogs of poetry

Photo: Jim Brandenburg

Across eternity, across its snows,
I see my unwritten poems,
I see the spoor of their paws dappling
the untroubled whiteness of the snow:
bristles raging, bloody-tongued,
lean greyhounds and wolves
leaping over the tops of the dykes,
running under the shade of the trees of the wilderness,
taking the defile of narrow glens,
making for the steepness of windy mountains;
their baying yell shrieking
across the hard bareness of the terrible times,
their everlasting barking in my ears,
their onrush seizing my mind:
career of wolves and eerie dogs
swift in pursuit of the quarry,
through the forest without veering,
over the mountain tops without sheering;
the mild mad dogs of poetry,
beauty of soul and face,
a white deer over hills and plains,
the deer of your gentle beloved beauty,
a hunt without halt, without respite.


Sorley MacLean, 'Dogs and Wolves' in From Wood to Ridge: Collected Poems (Manchester: Carcanet, 1999), p. 135.