Now Returned Home Analysis

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.


Submitted by Holt

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