Sweeney Astray (5 page)

43

 

 

 

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 tree-tops,

you lodge here in a friendly house.

 

 

 

 

 

Woman, have consideration.

Think of me in the sharp wind,

forgotten, past consideration,

without a cloak to wrap me in.

 

 

 

 

 

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 my days as king,

no longer called to head the troop

when warriors are mustering,

 

 

 

 

 

no longer the 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, on horseback,

I rode 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 watercress for his herds

and cold water for his mead,

bushes for companions,

the bare hillside for his bed.

 

 

 

 

 

Hugging these, my cold comforts,

still hungering after cress,

above the bare plain of Emly

I hear cries of the wild geese,

 

 

 

 

 

and still bowed to my hard yoke,

still a bag of skin and bone,

I reel as if a blow hit me

and fly off at the cry of a heron

 

 

 

 

 

to land maybe in Dairbre

in spring, when days are on the turn,

to scare away again by twilight

westward, into the Mournes.

 

 

 

 

 

Gazing down at clean gravel,

to lean out over a cool well,

drink a mouthful of sunlit water

and gather cress 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.

 

 

 

Woman:

 

Judge not and you won't be judged.

Sweeney, be kind, learn the lesson

that vengeance belongs to the Lord

and mercy multiplies our blessings.

 

 

 

Sweeney:

 

Then here is justice, fair and even,

from my high court in the yew:

Leave the patch of cress for me,

I shall give my rags in lieu.

 

 

 

 

 

I have no place to lay my head.

Human love has failed me. So

let me swop sins for watercress,

let thieving make a scapegoat of you.

 

 

 

 

 

Your greed has left me hungering

so may these weeds you robbed me of

come between you and good luck

and leave you hungering for love.

 

 

 

 

 

As you snatched cress, may you be snatched

by the foraging, blue-coated Norse.

And live eaten by remorse.

And cursing God that our paths crossed.

 

45

              

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

to the wave running

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.

 

 

 

I shift restlessly

on the plain of Boroma,

from Benn Iughoine

to Benn Boghaine.

 

 

 

Then that woman

interfered,

disturbed me

and affronted me

 

 

 

and made off with

the bite from my mouth.

It is constant,

this retribution,

 

 

 

as I gather cress

in tender bunches,

four round handfuls

in Glen Bolcain,

 

 

 

and unpick

the shy bog-berry,

then drink water

from Ronan's well.

 

 

 

My nails are bent,

my loins weak,

my feet bleeding,

my thighs bare—

 

 

 

I'll be overtaken

by a stubborn band

of Ulstermen

faring through Scotland.

 

 

 

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 seasoned and scraggy:

we mated like a couple

of hard-shanked cranes.

 

 

 

I tread the slop

and foam of beds,

unlooked for,

penitential,

 

 

 

and imagine treelines

somewhere beyond,

a banked-up, soothing,

wooded haze,

 

 

 

not like the swung

depths and swells

of that nightmare-black

lough in Mourne.

 

 

 

I need woods

for consolation,

some grove in Meath—

or the space of Ossory.

 

 

 

Or Ulster in harvest.

Strangford, shimmering.

Or a summer visit

to green Tyrone.

 

 

 

At Lammas I migrate

to the springs of Teltown,

pass the spring fishing

the bends of the Shannon.

 

 

 

I often get as far

as my old domain,

those groomed armies,

those stern hillsides.