Finn’s people landed and waited for him till the moors darkened

and the seas grew thick. After centuries, absentmindedly

and thinking all the while of Finn, they took off their old grey heads

and threw them to cap a nearby hill so high and deeply nothing could take root.

They trooped then, headless, down the path to an unroofed place,

settled their feet in the turf side by side in a ring

and addressed themselves to the future. By the time Finn came

they’d have turned to stone. He must have grieved, unpunctual Finn,

to find a set of slabs that once would have got up to bow

and a cairn of heads no longer able to weep.