In 1961, Scottish modernist poet, Kristján Norge disappeared from the Outer Hebridean Eilean a’ Bhàis. This poem is excerpted from a notebook found in 1977, purportedly detailing his underground experience with the sìth. According to Norge, he remains trapped within the notebook itself which is now held in the Shetland Museum and Archives.
Gated malts of Pictish fire, fisted sea grass
and the soiled moon, dank in a disused well,
is devouréd by dream. In sharp
descent, the eye regrets daylight, the living mould
of dying day, discarded as a cast for twilight,
dream-devouréd, moon-fusted,
blinks in dwindling salt, a silence of decay.
And the angel, with its pinch of dream,
devours the kind called fey
in muscular sense, corroded providence,
the battered swell of quill on quill
pluming the air, faa-vanished, still
bright the wounded swan, bled in the reeds,
a gloaming form, devouréd with dream,
of snapped, seraphic twigs and sodden leaves
discomposed. I lie between them, heart to bitter
heart of time. Feel the sedge-work in the brain,
in volatile, devouring dream,
think the flight-sense in the fingers, lifted to sky
and back again, toiling in the flag of numbers,
elf-marked with a diminishing grain.