Norman MacCaig

Scholars, I plead with you, Where are your dictionaries of the wind, the grasses?

Self under self, a pile of selves I standThreaded on time, and with metaphysic handLift the farm like a lid and seeFarm within farm, and in the centre, me.

When I was a teacher, teachers would come into my classroom and admire my desk on which lay nothing whatever, whereas theirs were heaped with papers and books.

I'm very gregarious, but I love being in the hills on my own.

Landscape is my religion....God in a green legend, I lean over the poolIn a testament of leaves. I dangle my twinkling mood Before me in a cool cave roofed with branchesAnd floored with a skin of water.

I will not feel, I will notfeel, untilI have to