Wolf Tongue (14 page)

Torchlit smoulderer

one with the light

hell-raiser

hunched under McCleod’s Table

scorched with his own heaven

Scald scalded

dancing in embers

fanning the flames

of his own destruction

Ranter’s furnace

sealed & shaking

head-bursting pricks of heat

light like sun

flaring

waking from sleep’s apology

aching for some portion of chime-talk

beautiful commerce

she traded in

Ranter

burning his boats

blowing his bridges

oil from the buttress

poured on himself

ringing his own bell

Quasimodo

tracing her melody

in the flight of birds

the misery

of an embrace

pity of the little creatures

inside her head

lurking behind the lace of memory

Lauding:
King Fool

black horehound crown

axe and hammer

raised to a skull

hammering home

Ranter’s brand:

home from the war

of loving her badly

back on my own ground

blade in your heart

Albion ablaze with winking stars

Ranter

flamebearer

prince with a torch-song

five years on the edge

lip of despair

one on the brink

drink to drink

sting to the enemy

smoothing his honey

toast of the tribe

drinking:

Lord, Loverde

I cupped the roses

in her kitchen garden

scented sweetness

from the dark of a lair

heat from her body

set me alight, Lord

I was a match

for her flair

she was kindling, Lord

wet grass in the morning

her body on fire

with a singular parting

Lord, listen

we wriggled and writhed

sang in the sheets

my blade in a tree

moving quickly taught us

the art of flight, Lord

climbing mountains

to the heart of her glare

an explosion of wills

a beating of fists

Writing

smell of stock

I was invaded

God protect me

where I stand

*

I saw her dandle

with a man and his money

twined together

beneath the mustard moon

night-scented she was

hungry and broken

her life a fuse

of fragile devices

Lord I was in her

and it came to nothing

she dawdled and dandled

climbed through his hair

heart-crushing joy

forlorn estrangement

all that was spoken

all that was broke

Lord I was beneath her

and it made no difference

glinting pendilae

hems to be kissed

Ranter’s lip-fever

the touch of a ring

buckled angel

under northern storms

Lord, I was abased

abashed by her beauty

bending any vow

in the heat of a moment

sleeping like strangers

scorched by sin

addorsed and affronted

begging for more

pit of the stomach, Lord

shaft and trench

freed from its lock

the flywheel whirred

Listen Prince:

she walked her bitches

all over the meadow

eight fingers

two thumbs

on every hound

howling and growling

harrows and heel-ploughs

breaking the back

of land he loved

*

suivante she was

privy perle withouten spot

doucement duckdown

they bedded in

Suibhne stroking

his dream of Siobhan

unhooking her bra-clasp

in several great cities

and one Quaker town

Ranter the peacock

armed with strut

*

Ranter’s bride

bird in a cage

banging the feastshelf

Seething:

Then you wore me out.

Stone at the end of

an accusing finger,

flinched at your fist.

Salt-block

rasped by a tongue.

Your tongue,

prince of my dithering.

Now I’m a tree,

my own patient roots.

Freed from you,

thin in the wind.

Dockleaves dancing

in the dawn

and autumn rain.

A stone alone.

Wind in a tree

that made me

what I am: mad

and stone-lonely.

Scorched by August

in that foreign place.

December excluded

from the songs.

When bilberries darken

you’ll remember me,

blinded staring into

your labradorite eyes.

You the bloody warrior.

Helmet-crusher raised aloft.

Foulmouthed blade-breaker

on freezing fells.

You prince of pipers,

pride of Sparty Lea.

My fingers brushed

your closing lids.

When I kissed you

the dark was a torment.

You fetched me

surges, deep like a sea.

Sad I was, sad: mad

like a dog. Bitch I was

away from the pack, and

you my discreet lover.

My body the smoke

of hill chimneys.

I’m whirring

like a flywheel

and you won’t

know me. A wafer

your rivers

flaked clean.

You can lap against

my absence forever,

beat your wings

in the dark of my leaving.

Alone on a crag

when you joy to the peewit,

remember I left you,

unhinged my dandling hand.

When you crouch alone

in the pillars of grass

broken by moonlight,

remember, rabbit-catcher,

the curse of anger

is in you. The shame

of fury and a harrowing

lust for control.

I wouldn’t go with you

down that road. Now

we are both alone

by rivers we love.

You the prince

of beck and burn.

I watch the Thames

in my own quiet way.

Streams like blades,

slow tides and times.

We are all flowing

to a wider place.

I wandered and wandered,

wouldn’t settle

in a place that suits.

Loved, then not for long.

When you glow in flames

of distant fires, remember

I loved you in hound’s clothing.

Remember my prayers.

Please remember

I wanted above

all things courtesy.

In this you failed,

flailed me with passion

like grand punishment.

Whip of your love

became my traces.

You, jerky songbird

in hound’s clothing.

Featherpeltstricken

moaning cloakclasp poems

even when I lay gladly

in your northern arms.

Haste is foreign to me.

I prefer to be slow.

Born under family blows

you will always wear

the warrior’s ring, long

for the long cry

and your blade buried

and your heart on fire

with unpunished blame.

For you the wounds are real.

Ranter, love, broken prince

crowned with bracken by

bullies just like you.

Robed in the crystal water

of streams to ease your back

broken by loping, where I

forever pressed surely

loving to calm you

in the time of our trial.

See my scallop shell

and wild hermit shoes.

I lift my hem lightly.

God forgive me

least of souls

forgive my face

its crookedness

my heart sceptical

    searching for justice

in unexpected places

my scoffing tongue

    whose flinting

drove her away.

For offences

    in every princedom

let me offer this:

Persistently drive me

    down every lane

in which I spoke asides.

Hammer home my rudeness

    strike my head

confirming my badness

making most

    of my humiliation. Then shall I

thoroughly be bent

distraught in sorriness

    and woe

my unforgivable compleynt.

My heart alone an instrument of shame.

Let go Siobhan

to wander back with friends.

I will write for you without persuasion:

I did all this and more. I was an animal

unleashed on souls

more used to prayer and prattle

in the joyful dawns of breakfasting.

Break my blade. I will dance on its fragments

in any public place

you care to name. I will hop

till blood comes.

Then I’ll write with fingers dipped:

your punishment is light enough

for all the mischief

Finnbar’s done.

I have no slaves but sell the dogs.

I will take you to the kennels

and to the cloakclasp jar.

To the furnished nursery

but there are no babies there.

Take all the splendid plaids

in which Finnbar once held sway:

that’s not a theft

to bother me, stripped as I am

    of delight & power.

Take this small but neatly-written

list of friends. For minor gifts

    and several brief encouragements

they will help compile

an index of my crimes.

    They don’t betray. I am happy for their

willing talk to be unweaved

by men bereft

    of knowledge

inside locked rooms.

I accept your governing.

    Your tutelage

once made me

gather baron clans

    prepared for war.

But I accept it now.

Loot my sties. Prod each pig

    to market or the spit.

I’m done with feasting.

*

This is the chamber where it all came true.

    Strip the covers and sell the bed,

throne of our beginning.

Throne of love’s dark days.

This is where she was, Lord,

    and I was master.

We drank from costrels

full-brimmed with wine.

We never had the ring of care

    beneath each eye.

She always had her things to do

and I had mine.

Listen, master of my punishment

    I am surliness defined.

I have never been one

to do the knuckling-down.

My native tongue delighted

    in the salty blow

of oceans in which

I splashed and sang.

I was a redshank lad

    in heather and gorse

with gleaming braid-pins

and her letters of consent.

Preferred my blade

    to the slow business of books.

You can’t kill a man

with a word.

For these admissions

of course I do

expect an extra

stroke or two.

*

This is where I bathed.

This is where I never shaved.

Proud of my long hair, combed in the manner

which sent her swooning.

Bladebreaker Finnbar and swooning Siobhan.

And here is the psalter

and here the blood-fine:

I dragged him from a monastery

and made his spirit mine.

God, my holiness, justice

was a button to be undone.

Her buttons, Lord of my

terrifying punishment.

And here are the pipes,

architect of undoing,

here are the pipes

by the fireside laid.

Play the pipes

for my undressing.

Press me forward

to be flayed.

*

Here are the books she left by in a hurry.

The brooches and beads and the cloakclasp jar.

Her hurry to wander from lethal moments,

from the looms of slaughter built by Finnbar.

Here soft woollen garments which clothed her leanly,

the plover-green plaids for the honeymoon walk.

Here she almost wasted in confinement speechless.

Here she wanted for the slow tunes and easy talk.

For I was and am an haughty chief, used more to harpstrums

than slow breathing from a woman’s lips.

I turned the filidh from the hearth and battle wrecks,

cut down foemen’s heads from chariot wheels.

Who was my appledawn bride is now the plaintiff

sorely gathered in with her grievance deep.

She’ll take me to the Judgement Mound

where for my offences many against the kindred

I shall rightly be impaled or strung by fires.

My own satires shall be turned against me, my courage

diminished, and magic gone from the streams and wells.

My own mead hall forgotten from the songs.

For this and all my other aches and pains inflicted,

apply your justice well. I expect the judgement:

to be driven from the tribe and to be denied.

To be belittled in the dust of my days.

Who was my bride in maythorn blossom days,

who was my bride from down the Finglas road.

Who was my bride the pride of Fingal’s clan.

Who was my joyous love broken and gone.

Taut-cord-binder, leg-shackler, ankle-twister, knee-crusher

of mornings when I am vulnerable most, rack-winder

you alone are witness to the grievous loss experienced here:

my misery, brehon, dogs gone from the warm hall.

Listen, man: she hadn’t done her best things yet.

Who was noontide clover-bee buzzing of days,

who was my bride. Who was gladsome gatherer

of seeds and stems in the nooky garden shades.

Who was the harbinger of pea-pod wine, noblesse oblige

who sometimes fixed her lips for queenly love-paint war.

Hark, stern one, when you have gathered your forces

and gathered me in, remember I loved her uninterrupted.

This is where we lay together, exhausted and true.

This is where we strayed beyond normal in the bedroom twining.

This is where we spent the peewit days in silence solemn and grave.

This is where we woke each day to a heatherglad beginning.

Those windless woodsmoke mornings, I wooed like a hound,

sniffing her traces. Jawking and lapping her laughter lines.

Harsh one, I was tranced by her magic stillness.

Your hardness-to-come, I would dance before her nakedness

and not feel the soul of my face burn like a brand

in an erasure of embarrassment for once in my life.

She weaved me, magistrate, to the tune of her willingness,

to the songs of her yesness, to her bosom of sighs.

I listened there to the little heart that pounded.

I listened to the North Sea in her stone-blue veins.

I wondered there at the whimsical mouse-murmurings

as her blood-ebbs turned tide with the moon.

Opening of her lids was like the rising of larks

in the blue slowness of a stubble-burning day.

She would stretch out her arms, disgrace-fetcher,

and I would lose my identity for hours on end,

displacing my power and delight in power, and my desire

for the wrecking of other men and the tormenting of tribes.

We would twinkle to the hearth, bearded one, and

wrap ourselves in the rags of our fortune.

Beast, she would purr, beast-enfolder, when I tickled

the physical appointments she treasured most.

O tip-toe she was to the water-butt for laving

those delightful cherishments, those little nut-browns.

And those breeze-bronzed curvings, and those angled

by bone paler because they do not see the sun.

And those tendons, designed by her long-hour stretching

of legs for the basket-gatherings when summer came on.

Quick command she had of shyness uncontrolled. Her

stutters were a charm to me even in the halted speech

employed by her to wave away my wanting. For her

alone I would desert the unsheathing of blades.

I’ll never see another like her all of my days.

If I sleep alone forever she’ll never come back.

Her cloakclasp shining in starlight at the edge of an ocean.

Her plaid flapping in the southern wind at the world’s rim.

1986