First attempt at Iain Crichton Smith

You are at the bottom of this poetry

(after Iain Crichton Smith)

You have changed the landscape of my mind.

Like nameless mountains, remote and fixed

Which glaciers carve their mark in - but not I.

Still dazzled by your heights,

clawing and clawing at your crumbling sides

With these weak hands.



You went astray, obscured by clouds

And sun so fierce I had to look away

And now my eye is lost in looking.

I do not have the know of your shape

I cannot trace your faces

I never scaled your path.



And I shall never claim you

Though I bear this flag high hopelessly,

Half-lifted by love's straining.

Memory draws meandering maps;

sketches ropes without holdings,

My fault-lines tremble with each climb.