{"id":1819,"date":"2018-10-01T06:23:39","date_gmt":"2018-10-01T13:23:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/?p=1819"},"modified":"2018-09-30T07:48:09","modified_gmt":"2018-09-30T14:48:09","slug":"st-kildas-hope-by-neile-graham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/?p=1819","title":{"rendered":"St. Kilda’s Hope by Neile Graham"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

You stitched your clothes with feathers.
\nHitched your unwinged self
\nover the cliff-side dripping with guano
\nfor the harvest of birds.<\/p>\n

Gannets and guillemots and gulls,
\nfulmars, snipe, bonxies, plovers and puffins
\nand the pterodactyl skuas
\nfastening you to the stony ground<\/p>\n

to the gray bounds of sea and sky.
\nTrusting your life not to slip.
\nInvaded by good mainland intentions
\nthat undermined everything.<\/p>\n

What need for windows in stone houses
\nwhen the view was not rare\u00e2\u20ac\u201d
\nyou lived your life in and out of it.
\nTamp out the peat fire and hobble<\/p>\n

away. A thousand hard and airborne years
\nbroken by the world that is not this place.
\nNot peat, not stone, not the track
\nmade by sheep. Abandon the tight Cs <\/p>\n

of the cleits, the storehouses
\ndotting the slopes cairn-like,
\nplanted obsessively against the travails
\nof sea and sky and starvation,<\/p>\n

vented to let the wind
\nkeep the contents dry
\nso the constant rain wouldn’t rot
\neverything that kept you breathing.<\/p>\n

The walls thicker than the space
\nthey contain. Part nature, part culture
\nboth parts alive. The mystery now
\ninside the clinging, vacant Cs, <\/p>\n

always in sight of the sea
\nsometime shelter for the wild-now sheep
\noften their last. This is the world
\nyour ancients built and time muddles<\/p>\n

to tumbles of eroding stones erasing
\nthe marks of human hands till no one
\ncan read how it dies and is dead. Clouds
\nwool-heavy on the hills so empty of you.<\/p>\n

photo is “Cleit for storing fuel or hay on St Kilda” by Richard Keaton, Dec. 31, 1897.<\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You stitched your clothes with feathers. Hitched your unwinged self over the cliff-side dripping with guano for the harvest of birds. Gannets and guillemots and gulls, fulmars, snipe, bonxies, plovers and puffins and the pterodactyl skuas fastening you to the stony ground to the gray bounds of sea and sky. Trusting your life not to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1819"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1822,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1819\/revisions\/1822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}