While in Edinburgh he became part of the Milne’s Bar crowd, which included Hugh MacDiarmid and Norman MacCaig. He was briefly engaged to Stella Cartwright — “the muse of Milne’s Bar” — but returned to his hometown of Stromness, where he lived unmarried for the rest of his life.
George Mackay Brown once wrote that his themes were "mainly religious (birth, love, death, resurrection, ceremonies of fishing and agriculture)…"
The following poem is from his collection Carve the Runes and appears in Selected Poems 1952—1992.
Daffodils
Heads skewered with grief
Three Marys at the cross
(Christ was wire and wax
festooned on a dead tree)
Guardians of the rock,
their emerald tapers touch
the pale wick of the sun
and perish before the rose
bleeds on the solstice stone
and the cornstalk unloads
peace from hills of thorn
Spindrifting blossoms
from the gray comber of March
thundering on the world,
splash our rooms coldly with
first grace of light, until
the corn-tides throb, and fields
drown in honey and fleeces
Shawled in radiance
tissue of sun and snow
three bowl-bound daffodils
in the euclidian season
when darkness equals light
and the world’s circle shudders
down to one bleeding point
Mary Mary and Mary
triangle of grief.
*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about George Mackay Brown: first post, second post.
Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.
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