Bog Myrtle & Peat

What are we in the hands of great God?

It was in vain you set up thorn and briar

In battle array against the fire

And treason crackling in your blood;

For the wild thorns grow tame

And will do nothing to oppose the flame;

Your lacerations tell the losing game

You play against a sickness past your cure.

How will the hands be strong? How will the heart endure?

I love the fires which are set in the whinns and left for the night to find them. Out beyond the fallen kirk and the wrecked remains of sickened trees, they show that we’re still trying – and it does me good to see the glow of the twigs exploding in the moonrise; sparks which fly to mask the glint from satellites we never asked to see; satellites and the signal pulse of jets in the starlit darkness. 

These flames are made of high terrestrial stuff; a wonder of the winter, and something everyone should see – even though I know them for an age-old, dead-end chore. In my grandfather’s day, there was value in scorching the whinns and encouraging new and more succulent growth from the grass which grew beneath them. Now it’s done to prevent land from being reclassified as scrub and the annual subsidy cheque reduced accordingly. It’s only a paperchase; no more than the crackle of soon-to-be-tinder. And that’s before you remember that this burning only helps the seeds succeed – no sooner has the blackness gone than shoots emerge from sullen stumps. Perhaps the sheep will eat more than they might have done and thereby slow the steady resumption of normality – but the slosh of diesel and matches will always have something like a home in these hills. 

If these fires appear painful or pointless, remember that beauty is its own reward – and every burning man has torn a lump from the pool of his work to boil himself in hissing isolation; the least the world can do is sometimes love the flags we fly against the darkness. So have no fear for what’s been lost when morning comes again. The glow’s a glory while it lasts – and harm’s already healing.

When I came here first you were always singing,

A hint of the clip of the pick 

In our winnowing climb and attack.

Raise it again, man. We still believe what we hear.

Made from bits of Mr Edwards and the Spider by Robert Lowell and The Singer’s House, by Seamus Heaney