he poet Lachlan Mackinnon lives in Ely, and is also a distinguished critic and former teacher. Music, of all kinds, has always been important to his poetry, alongside a healing journeying towards faith. A psalmist (notably David in the Old Testament) is a composer of sacred lyrics, and sometimes poems can share this territory. The writer’s epiphany in this poem answers our own need for such moments of consolation. The Psalmist by Lachlan Mackinnon When I look up my soul is water, it trembles beneath your breath as the skin of a mountain pool shakes below whistled cloud. Where there is music let each voice praise you, clashing cymbals unleash their roaring whisper, the strings sing at one with braided voices of boys and girls, and let the harpist bow her sweet neck to the sweet burden of an air plucked from air, the trumpeter bray what you have promised, that you will move among us to bind each wound, that all things shall be made good.