To her left, the sea spilled across the small slipway. There was a heart-stopping crack of thunder from the waves. A fall of rain blew in. She felt light-headed and afraid. She stepped into a hollow on the down-wind side of the rocks where the last of the flowering sea-thrift grew in small pink clumps. The weight of the low cliffs was over her head. The land was made of stone, and each stone was neatly packaged away on beds of slate. And on each slate a record of straight lines and broken lines was kept – of distances, of levels, of the sea and its booms, and gravel blown up.

Dermot Healy – A Goat’s Song