Now Returned Home

 Beyond the narrows of the Inner Hebrides
We sailed the cold angry sea toward Barra, where Heaval mountain
Lifts like a mast.
 There were few people on the steamer, it was late in the
 year; I noticed most an old shepherd,
Two wise-eyed dogs wove anxious circles around his feet, and a thin-armed
 girl 
Who cherished what seemed a doll, wrapping it against the sea-wind.
 When
 it moved I said to my wife "She'll smother it.
"
And she to the girl: "Is your baby cold? You'd better run down out of the
 wind and uncover its face.
"
She raised the shawl and said "He is two weeks old.
 His mother died in
 Glasgow in the hospital
Where he was born.
 She was my sister.
" I looked ahead at the bleak island,
 gray stones, ruined castle,
A few gaunt houses under the high and comfortless mountain; my wife
 looked at the sickly babe,
And said "There's a good doctor in Barra? It will soon be winter.
" "Ah,"
 she answered, "Barra'd be heaven for him,
The poor wee thing, there's Heaval to break the wind.
 We live on a wee
 island yonder away,
Just the one house.
"

   The steamer moored, and a skiff—what they call a
 curragh, like a canvas canoe
Equipped with oars—came swiftly along the side.
 The dark-haired girl
 climbed down to it, with one arm holding
That doubtful slip of life to her breast; a tall young man with sea-pale eyes
 and an older man
Helped her; if a word was spoken I did not hear it.
 They stepped a mast
 and hoisted a henna-color
Bat's wing of sail.


   Now, returned home
After so many thousands of miles of road and ocean, all the hulls sailed in,
 the houses visited,
I remember that slender skiff with dark henna sail
Bearing off across the stormy sunset to the distant island
Most clearly; and have rather forgotten the dragging whirlpools of London,
 The screaming haste of New York.

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