Norman MacCaig

“Landscape is my religion.

...God in a green legend, I lean over the pool
In a testament of leaves. I dangle my twinkling mood
Before me in a cool cave roofed with branches
And floored with a skin of water. ”
― Norman MacCaig, The Poems of Norman MacCaig

“If

If your hand came, dead in the dead of night,
And touched my forehead, waking me to see
You standing dead there in the dead of night,
I who fear ghosts would have no fear at all.
I'd greet you with the tenderest hello
And you would smile, though sad. And then you'd go.

There would be nothing deathly in your death
For your love always was the laughing sort
That quickened life and would not die with death.
And when you'd gone, I would not want to weep --
That loving gaiety would still be there
Filling with its own peace the quickened air.”
― Norman MacCaig