Having visited the Celtic chapel of St Peter-on-the-Wall at Bradwell-on-Sea, Essex (post of August 4th). I was reminded anew of the times we had spent on Iona, that amazing Island where Celtic Christianity flourished under St Columba in the 6th/7th Century. There are already a number of poems about the island on this blog (listed below) but this one deals with a singular location on the island where the extraction of marble was a start-up industry in the early eighteenth century and was only briefly fully operational in the early twentieth century. So the enterprise was not productive for long but has left its scars in an otherwise beautiful bay. The skeletal machinery would be even more grim had it not been perceived as a part of the island's heritage and preserved with judiciously applied paint and preservative. Other places have not fared so well - so this poem is a tribute, not only to Iona but to those many places made ugly by the discarded building and machinery of a former age.
IONA: The Marble Quarry
To this Island:
a bequest of the Creator;
gentle contours,
harmonious flora
and a sea-set tranquility
that touches eternity.
To this Island:
a legacy of a laird;
a surly, rusting engine
abandoned
midst the dross of industry,
despoiling a bay,
shrieking
of wealth's temporality.
Other Iona Poems are:
IONA: A special place in the Cosmos
IONA: A Thin Place
IONA: Bethlehem of the Isles
IONA: Blake Revisited
IONA: Pipe Song
IONA: St Oran's Graveyard - Resting place of kings
IONA: The Hermit's Cell
IONA: The High Crosses
IONA: The Nunnery (On Justice and Women in the Church)
IONA: On Dun-i: Transfiguration
Other Iona Poems are:
IONA: A special place in the Cosmos
IONA: A Thin Place
IONA: Bethlehem of the Isles
IONA: Blake Revisited
IONA: Pipe Song
IONA: St Oran's Graveyard - Resting place of kings
IONA: The Hermit's Cell
IONA: The High Crosses
IONA: The Nunnery (On Justice and Women in the Church)
IONA: On Dun-i: Transfiguration