Scored with a Moon is Lydia Harris‘s poem written in response to Doris Kareva’s *** (A house by the sea; translated by Miriam McIlfatrick-Ksenofontov) and Madara Gruntmane’s lines from *** (She loves so demandingly; translated by Marta Ziemelis and Richard O’Brien): “sticking her stories into the cracks of the fissured wall”. The poem has been written during ‘Transreading the Baltics’ course ran by Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese at the Poetry School.
SCORED WITH A MOON
A house on the shore to lodge what is dumb:
a her or a him fills this vessel of stone.
We mortared the roof, planed the way in,
welcomed no-eye, no-hoof, no-skin.
We leave and return. Our words scuffle the air.
What’s within remains calm or not there.
Here is a bird scratched on a bone,
a comb scored with a moon, a stick for a loom.
The tide drags the sea up, then down.
Nothing is uttered or born.
By Lydia Harris
Lydia Harris has made her home in the Orkney island of Westray. In 2017 she held a Scottish Book Trust New Writer Award for poetry.