Deer on the High Hills

Selected Poems

Iain Crichton Smith, John Greening

• Publisher: Carcanet Classics
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781800170940
• eBook ISBN: 9781800170957
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

Growing up on the Isle of Lewis, Iain Crichton Smith spoke only Gaelic until he was five. But at school in Bayble and then Stornoway, everything had to be in English. Like many islanders before and since, his culture is divided: two languages, two histories entailing exile, a central theme of his poetry. His divided perspective sharply delineates the tyranny of history and religion, of the cramped life of small communities; it gives him a tender eye for the struggle of women and men in a world defined by denials.

Deer on the High Hills: Selected Poems includes forty years' work and proves that big themes - love, history, power, submission, death - can be addressed without the foil of irony and acquire resonance when given a local habitation and a voice that risks pure, impassioned speech. Editor John Greening provides indexes, a preface and an essay on the life and work of this important poet.

from The Exiles (1984)

166

RETURNING EXILE

You who come home do not tell me

anything about yourself, where you have come from,

why your coat is wet, why there is grass in your hair.

The sheep huddle on the hills as always,

there’s a yellow light as if cast by helmets,

the fences made of wire are strung by the wind.

Do not tell me where you have come from, beloved stranger.

It is enough that there is light still in your eyes,

that the dog rising on his pillar of black knows you.

167

THERE IS NO SORROW

There is no sorrow worse than this sorrow

the dumb grief of the exile

among villages that have strange names

among the new rocks.

The shadows are not his home’s shadows

nor the tales his tales

and even the sky is not the same

nor the stars at night.

Sometimes he sees his home in the stars

the light from its window

his village trembling and vibrating

and the old white faces

mumbling at the fire.

But the strange names stand up against him

and the dryness of the earth

and the cold barks of dogs

and his sails are folded in this harbour

which is not his.

Poor lost exile

For you there is nothing but endurance

till one miraculous day

you will wake up in the morning

and put on your foreign clothes

and know that they are at last yours.

168

NEXT TIME

Listen, when you come home

to see your wife again

where the tapestry stands unfinished

across the green brine,

sit among the stones

and consider how it was

in the old days

before you became a king

and walked hunchbacked

with decisions on your shoulders.

Sit among the rocks

hearing the sound of the sea

eternally unchanging

and watch the buttercups

so luminously pale.

The cries of the dead

haunt the gaunt headland

and the shields clash

in that astonishing blue.

Simply enter the boat

and leave the island

for there is no return,

boy, forerunner of kings.

Next time, do this,

salt bronzed veteran

let the tapestry be unfinished

as truthful fiction is.

169

THE EXILES

(Translated from the author’s own Gaelic)

The many ships that left our country

with white wings for Canada.

They are like handkerc...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• The Text
• Acknowledgements
• from The Long River (1955)
• from The White Noon (1959)
• from Thistles and Roses (1961)
• from Deer on the High Hills (1962)
• from The Law and the Grace (1965)
• from Three Regional Voices (1968)
• from From Bourgeois Land (1969)
• from Lines Review (1969)
• from Selected Poems (1970)
• from Hamlet in Autumn (1972)
• from Love Poems and Elegies (1972)
• from Penguin Modern Poets 21 (1972)
• from Orpheus and Other Poems (1974)
• from The Permanent Island (1975)
• from The Notebooks of Robinson Crusoe and Other poems (1975)
• from In the Middle (1977)
• from A Country for Old Men and My Canadian Uncle (2000)
• from Selected Poems 1955–1980 (1981)
• from The Emigrants (1983)
• from The Exiles (1984)
• from A Life (1986)
• from The Village and Other Poems (1989)
• from Ends and Beginnings (1994)
• from The Human Face (1996)
• from The Leaf and the Marble (1998)
• from A Country for Old Men and My Canadian Uncle (2000)
• from New Collected Poems (2011)
• Afterword
• Select Bibliography
• Index of Titles and First Lines
• About the Authors
• Carcanet Classics Include
• Copyright