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  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

  to the wave running

  in tidal Barrow,

  one night in hard Dun Cernan,

  the next among the wild flowers

  of Benn Boirne;
<
br />   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

  was I not killed at Moira?

  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