green watercress in thatch on wells
where the drinking blackbird goes.
Sweetest of the leafy stalks,
the vetches strew the pathway;
the oyster-grass is my delight,
and the wild strawberry.
Low-set clumps of apple trees
drum down fruit when shaken;
scarlet berries clot like blood
on mountain rowan.
Briars curl in sideways,
arch a stickle back,
draw blood and curl up innocent
to sneak the next attack.
The yew tree in each churchyard
wraps night in its dark hood.
Ivy is a shadowy
genius of the wood.
Holly rears its windbreak,
a door in winter’s face;
life-blood on a spear-shaft
darkens the grain of ash.
Birch tree, smooth and blessed,
delicious to the breeze,
high twigs plait and crown it
the queen of trees.
The aspen pales
and whispers, hesitates:
a thousand frightened scuts
race in its leaves.
But what disturbs me most
in the leafy wood
is the to and fro and to and fro
of an oak rod.
*
A starry frost will come
dropping on the pools
and I’ll be astray
on unsheltered heights:
herons calling
in cold Glenelly,
flocks of birds quickly
coming and going.
I prefer the elusive
rhapsody of blackbirds
to the garrulous blather
of men and women.
I prefer the squeal of badgers
in their sett
to the tally-ho
of the morning hunt.
I prefer the re-
echoing belling of a stag
among the peaks
to that arrogant horn.
Those unharnessed runners
from glen to glen!
Nobody tames
that royal blood,
each one aloof
on its rightful summit,
antlered, watchful.
Imagine them,
the stag of high Slieve Felim,
the stag of the steep Fews,
the stag of Duhallow, the stag of Orrery,
the fierce stag of Killarney.
The stag of Islandmagee, Larne’s stag,
the stag of Moylinny,
the stag of Cooley, the stag of Cunghill,
the stag of the two-peaked Burren.
*
I am Sweeney, the whinger,
the scuttler in the valley.
But call me, instead,
Peak-pate, Stag-head.
Then Sweeney said:
– From now on, I won’t tarry in Dal-Arie because Lynchseachan would have my life to avenge the hag’s.
So he proceeded to Roscommon in Connacht, where he alighted on the bank of the well and treated himself to watercress and water. But when a woman came out of the erenach’s house, he panicked and fled, and she gathered the watercress from the stream. Sweeney watched her from his tree and greatly lamented the theft of his patch of cress, saying
– It is a shame that you are taking my watercress. If only you knew my plight, how I am unpitied by tribesman or kinsman, how I am no longer a guest in any house on the ridge of the world. Watercress is my wealth, water is my wine, and hard bare trees and soft tree bowers are my friends. Even if you left that cress, you would not be left wanting; but if you take it, you are taking the bite from my mouth.
And he made this poem:
Woman, picking the watercress
and scooping up my drink of water,
were you to leave them as my due
you would still be none the poorer.
Woman, have consideration,
we two go two different ways:
I perch out among the tree-tops,
you lodge in a friendly house.
Woman, have consideration.
Think of me in the sharp wind,
forgotten, past consideration,
shivering, stripped to the skin.
Woman, you cannot start to know
sorrows Sweeney has forgotten:
how friends were so long denied him
he killed his gift for friendship even.
Fugitive, deserted, mocked
by memories of his days as king,
no longer called to head the troop
when warriors are mustering,
no longer an honoured guest
at tables anywhere in Ireland,
ranging like a mad pilgrim
over rock-peaks on the mountain.
The harper who harped me to rest,
where is his soothing music now?
My people too, my kith and kin,
where did their affection go?
In my heyday, I, on horseback,
came riding high into my own:
now memory’s an unbroken horse
that rears and suddenly throws me down.
Over starlit moors and plains,
woman plucking my watercress,
to his cold and lonely station
the shadow of that Sweeney goes
with watercresses for his herds,
cold water for his mead,
bushes for companions,
the bare hillside for his bed.
Gazing down at clean gravel,
to lean out over a cool well,
drink a mouthful of sunlit water
and gather cresses by the handful –
even this you would pluck from me,
lean pickings that have thinned my blood
and chilled me on the cold uplands,
hunkering low when winds spring up.
Morning wind is the coldest wind,
it flays me of my rags, it freezes –
the very memory leaves me speechless,
woman, picking the watercress.
He stayed in Roscommon that night and the next day he went on to Slieve Aughty, from there to the pleasant slopes of Slemish, then on to the high peaks of Slieve Bloom, and from there to Inishmurray. After that, he stayed six weeks in a cave that belonged to Donnan on the island of Eig off the west of Scotland. From there he went on to Ailsa Craig, where he spent another six weeks, and when he finally left he bade the place farewell and bewailed his state, like this:
Without bed or board
I face dark days
in frozen lairs
and wind-driven snow.
Ice scoured by winds.
Watery shadows from weak sun.
Shelter from the one tree
on a plateau.
Haunting deer-paths,
enduring rain,
first-footing the grey
frosted grass.
I climb towards the pass
and the stag’s belling
rings off the wood,
surf-noise rises
where I go, heartbroken
and worn out,
sharp-haunched Sweeney,
raving and moaning.
The sough of the winter night,
my feet packing the hailstones
as I pad the dappled
banks of Mourne
or lie, unslept, in a wet bed
on the hills by Lough Erne,
tensed for first light
and an early start.
Skimming the waves
at Dunseverick,
listening to billows
at Dun Rodairce,
hurtling from that great wave
in tidal Barrow,
one night in hard Dun Cernan,
the next among the wild flowers
of Benn Boirne;
and then a stone pillow
on the screes of Croagh Patrick.
*
But to have ended up
lamenting here
on Ailsa Craig.
A hard station!
Ailsa Craig,
the seagulls’ home,
God knows
it is hard lodgings.
Ailsa Craig,
bell-shaped rock,
reaching sky-high,
snout in the sea –
it hard-beaked,
me skimped and scraggy:
we mated like a couple
of hard-shanked cranes.
Once when Sweeney was rambling and raking through Connacht he ended up in Alternan in Tireragh. A community of holy people had made their home there, and it was a lovely valley, with a turbulent river shooting down the cliff; trees fruited and blossomed on the cliff face; there were sheltering ivies and heavy-topped orchards, there were wild deer and hares and fat swine; and sleek seals, that used to sleep on the cliff, having come in from the ocean beyond. Sweeney coveted the place mightily and sang its praises aloud in this poem:
Sainted cliff at Alternan,
nut grove, hazel-wood!
Cold quick sweeps of water
fall down the cliff-side.
Ivies green and thicken there,
its oak-mast is precious.
Fruited branches nod and bend
from heavy-headed apple trees.
Badgers make their setts there
and swift hares have their form;
and seals’ heads swim the ocean,
cobbling the running foam.
And by the waterfall, Colman’s son,
haggard, spent, frost-bitten Sweeney,
Ronan of Drumgesh’s victim,
is sleeping at the foot of a tree.
At last Sweeney arrived where Moling lived, the place that is known as St Mullins. Just then, Moling was addressing himself to Kevin’s psalter and reading from it to his students. Sweeney presented himself at the brink of the well and began to eat watercress.
– You are more than welcome here, Sweeney, said Moling, for you are fated to live and die here. You shall leave the history of your adventures with us and receive a Christian burial in a churchyard. Therefore, said Moling, no matter how far you range over Ireland, day by day, I bind you to return to me every evening so that I may record your story.
All during the next year the madman kept coming back to Moling. One day he would go to Inishbofin in west Connacht, another day to lovely Assaroe. Some days he would view the clean lines of Slemish, some days he would be shivering on the Mournes. But wherever he went, every night he would be back for vespers at St Mullins.
Moling ordered his cook to leave aside some of each day’s milking for Sweeney’s supper. This cook’s name was Muirghil and she was married to a swineherd of Moling’s called Mongan. Anyhow, Sweeney’s supper was like this: she would sink her heel to the ankle in the nearest cow-dung and fill the hole to the brim with new milk. Then Sweeney would sneak into the deserted corner of the milking yard and lap it up.
One night there was a row between Muirghil and another woman, in the course of which the woman said:
– If you do not prefer your husband, it is a pity you cannot take up with some other man than the looney you have been meeting all year.
The herd’s sister was within earshot and listening, but she said nothing until the next morning. Then when she saw Muirghil going to leave the milk in the cow-dung beside the hedge where Sweeney roosted, she came in to her brother and said:
– Are you a man at all? Your wife’s in the hedge yonder with another man.
Jealousy shook him like a brainstorm. He got up in a sudden fury, seized a spear from a rack in the house, and made for the madman. Sweeney was down swilling the milk out of the cow-dung with his side exposed towards the herd, who let go at him with the spear. It went into Sweeney at the nipple of his left breast, went through him, and broke his back.
There is another story. Some say the herd had hidden a deer’s horn at the spot where Sweeney drank from the cow-dung and that Sweeney fell and killed himself on the point of it.
Immediately, Moling and his community came along to where Sweeney lay and Sweeney repented and made his confession to Moling. He received Christ’s body and thanked God for having received it and after that was anointed by the clerics.
There was a time when I preferred
the turtle-dove’s soft jubilation
as it flitted round a pool
to the murmur of conversation.
There was a time when I preferred
the blackbird singing on the hill
and the stag loud against the storm
to the clinking tongue of this bell.
There was a time when I preferred
the mountain grouse crying at dawn
to the voice and closeness
of a beautiful woman.
There was a time when I preferred
wolf-packs yelping and howling
to the sheepish voice of a cleric
bleating out plainsong.
You are welcome to pledge healths
and carouse in your drinking dens;
I will dip and steal water
from a well with my open palm.
You are welcome to that cloistered hush
of your students’ conversation;
I will study the pure chant
of hounds baying in Glen Bolcain.
You are welcome to your salt meat
and fresh meat in feasting-houses;
I will live content elsewhere
on tufts of green watercress.
The herd’s sharp spear has finished me,
passed clean through my body.
Ah Christ, who disposes all things, why
Then Sweeney’s death-swoon came over him and Moling, attended by his clerics, rose up and each of them placed a stone on Sweeney’s grave.
The Names of the Hare
(from the Middle English)
The man the hare has met
will never be the better for it
except he lay down on the land
what he carries in his hand –
be it staff or be it bow –
and bless him with his elbow
and come out with this litany
with devotion and sincerity
to speak the praises of the hare.
Then the man will better fare.
‘The hare, call him scotart,
big-fellow, bouchart,
the O’Hare, the jumper,
the rascal, the racer.
Beat-the-pad, white-face,
funk-the-ditch, shit-ass.
The wimount, the messer,
the skidaddler, the nibbler,
the ill-met, the slabber.
The quick-scut, the dew-flirt,
the grass-biter, the goibert,
the home-late, the do-the-dirt.
The starer, the wood-cat,
the purblind, the furze cat,
the skulker, the bleary-eyed,
the wall-eyed, the glance-aside
and also the hedge-springer.
The stubble-stag, the long lugs,
the stook-deer, the frisky legs,
the wild one, the skipper,
the hug-the-ground, the lurker,
the race-the-wind, the skiver,
the shag-the-hare, the hedge-squatter,
the dew-hammer, the dew-hopper,
the sit-tight, the grass-bounder,
the jig-foot, the earth-sitter,
the light-foot, the fern-sitter,
the kail-stag, the herb-cropper.
The creep-along, the sitter-still,
the pintail, the ring-the-hill,
the sudden start,
the shake-the-heart,
the belly-white,
the lambs-in-flight.
The gobshite, t
he gum-sucker,
the scare-the-man, the faith-breaker,
the snuff-the-ground, the baldy skull
(his chief name is scoundrel).
The stag sprouting a suede horn,
the creature living in the corn,
the creature bearing all men’s scorn,
the creature no one dares to name.’
When you have got all this said
then the hare’s strength has been laid.
Then you might go faring forth –
east and west and south and north,
wherever you incline to go –
but only if you’re skilful too.
And now, Sir Hare, good-day to you.
God guide you to a how-d’ye-do
with me: come to me dead
in either onion broth or bread.
(1981)
from STATION ISLAND (1984)
The Underground
There we were in the vaulted tunnel running,
You in your going-away coat speeding ahead
And me, me then like a fleet god gaining
Upon you before you turned to a reed
Or some new white flower japped with crimson
As the coat flapped wild and button after button
Sprang off and fell in a trail
Between the Underground and the Albert Hall.
Honeymooning, mooning around, late for the Proms,
Our echoes die in that corridor and now
I come as Hansel came on the moonlit stones
Retracing the path back, lifting the buttons