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Robin Williamson
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Five Denials on Merlin's Grave
myself, a brat who vaguely gazed
on the knee high nineteen forties
and the waist high nineteen fifties
and couldn't figure numbers worth a damn
was always a chancer
and given three lines to add I'd put the middle row
down as the answer
but I would read all day if I could get away with it
and all night too with a flashlight under covers
of that Green Man my namesake, or of Merlin of the borders
and in seeking out the stories of Britain's ancient lineage
I delved
on days subtracted from the blackboard's paltry tyrannies
among dog eared authorities, back shelved in libraries
who barked at point blank dogmatically
lacking their bell and candle
into my eyes at daydream from a skull.
among the glamoured fields of fine July I lazed
to read and revel through these pleadings in dead language
yardages of verbiage in the ravelled case
of the comings and the goings in the high and far off times
stacked and dried.
wherein it is recounted with clerkish severity
fish spearing, wizened, louts without modesty
displaying a crude cunning that might pass as perspicacity
beehived and coracled among our western isles
while Noah was still flattening his thumbs, and bending nails.
these people we so glibly call the Picts
whatever thoughts they voiced in hamitic vocables
whatever shades they prized, what light or dapple
refract; maligned with daubs of woad in patronizing words.
for they were clean as clams, witty and thick as thieves
gossiping rnaskers worthy of serious love, sticklers for detail
furred with wolf pity, honeyed as the claws of bears
tree truthful looters along time's inches
shooting a barefaced line, secretive as heather ale,
with leagues of breeding
brewing or brooding or brave enough in a pinch
charting and outstaring the vagaries of heaven
from winter's prick to the crack of summer
kept watch upon the Pleiades
calendaring from months of feathered dawns
just seasons for the eagle and the wren
owning red breasted lazarus laughter
no better or worse than we
as babes swim back in time, gilled and goggle eyed
evolving as now, intelligent as the green sea
that bloods to Egypt, India, and China
fathoming forgotten simplicities.
it is written bland as boiled cabbage
such savages were heaving out their oyster shells
all up and down the miles of Britain
since first the ice receded to the northern wastes
scouring our hills as round as breasts
until the time of Noah's brother, Partholon
whose children
haggling like gulls
mysteriously arose from Sicily
some say
herdsmen pipers quenching away through thirsty south Italy
and wending westward on
at the drone of cattle talk, fly hummed and bitten
by finger quick and cream fat moons
breaking new sod for barley seed
with wooden plows
and rooting for wild garlic
with spades of antler bone.
but let us sing the skill of the master builders
long ago
for it was no peasantry clodding after scrawny cows
who raised the hollow hills and henge stones
but calm and cunning wizards worked these wonders
continuing the snail line, dod flat at ring stand
ruling scribing and pegging out in granite
the windings of the dragon track
that writhes unhewn
in sward and marsh and moss and meadowland
that twines in stellar gravity among the eaves of the cubic sky
serpent bird of Hy Brassail
force of spring
wing sunk
bound free
as we perceive our dream at centrifugal spin
so green leaves grow
the rowan bears the crown
so they, upon the veins of Anu, blazed the eye of Bel
to print a spell of glory in our blinks of lives
rightness of the world self seen
the green
the garden
and poetry attests their artistry thus and otherwise
older yet and wiser far
and I will not forget.
it is recounted with an absence of drollery
next came copper workers with wheels and carpentry
from the land of the Greeks, drunken by starlight
north through the Daneland heroing and charioteering
and breaking bones like crockery
with their brown swords.
but let us sing these rovers homesick for sights unseen
and sounding for the sake of the silence between the stars
and garnering an elder lore within their druldry
for so bore Nuada of the Silver Hand,
master of the elements
into Alba
into Erin
the quest of the Seat Perilous
and of the White Bull's Spotted Hide
to make and unmake the demons of the mind to fly
honouring the unvisionable Dagda
and Mananan of the Letters in the Craneskin
and shining Lug of the Ways
of the world
the garden
and carrying always within, as is fitting
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the shadowlit
whispering
marefaced
catfaced
owlfaced
ageless huntress and thrice queen
who musing in the blood whistles and whirls
her hounds and ravens, beyond all sacrifice
craven and unrhyming, nailed in a blackthorn tree
lest horned eyes be blinded by the tomb of the lightlessness
in the charm of the halcyon dark.
on this, our grave and Christian clerics in alarm
avert their pens
womenless men crooked in the cloister of their age
but poetry declares it differently
older yet and lovelier far, this mystery
and I will not forget.
the next wave brought the flaxen sons of Mil
as it is writ
by stuffy hermits with a bone to pick
blundering up the Danube and down the Rhine
the warrior forefathers of the Gael
who shipped and sailed deep waters
at wind beck
one arm
one hand
one finger
prowing west across to Spain
round France and through the Channel
plundering the coastlands as they came
till they too brought their reign into the glens
the horsemen of Muimnon of the Gold.
but let us chime in the heather blue of their two handed harpers
spiralling from red and silver wires
tones of the faces that speak from jurassic rock
with eyes like leaves
a winding music keening and exultant
through the green drum of the hills, the white briar rose
and the long dance of the horses cantering in threes
high and lonesome reel that galloped in the duple hoofbeat
sharp as the blade of January and soft as snow, their minstrelsy
that kissed
and parted
and found rest in journeying
they rode and billowed in the days of old
worshipping across the world a music
that nests in bird song, insinuates in river babble
sings in the soft south wind and burns in the burning flame
to lay a burden and a turn that catch still at the heart
and descant yet
to the echo of that oldest tune of all, that stirs the bold
and I will not forget.
and lastly it is told,
and quaveringly
by generals doddering in their second infancy
that in the days of Darius
before Christ's birth six hundred years
Labraid the Exile came pillaging and slaughtering
as if to prove Darwin right
with his darkbrowed Gauls
and their leaf shaped spears.
I hate the scribblers who only write of war
and leave the glory of the past unsung between the lines
but sadly and truly on the sinister left hand
the tale of Britain since the Flood is of crowing and croaking war
that gouged heart high
a fame that soaked away
that maimed all vision
spilt jewels both red and white
killed memory and might
turned amethyst to adamant
lamenting in the reed, the wound horn, the tolling bell
brother killers the salt sea it is salt with tears
a wave flooding without an ebb
toppling stone from story
before ever Caesar's lawful butchers came
or riddling Saxons setting flame to thatch
or rune wise Vikings whirling blood wet axes
or courtly Normans cutting off of hands
and the burning church jingling in pardoner's prate
of Hell, as pedants munched their roasted meat
dumped off a fear of Spirit on the heap
as if one life was all.
but long before we ever took the names
of English, Scottish, Welsh, or Irish
and long before the tower of Babel fell and language cracked
there was interchange and colloquy and conversation upon this world
and standing stones remain to bear it testimony
from China to the Americas, and from India to Ireland, patterning.
still sings the salmon louder in the wild deer's lung
above and below all weir the Green Man makes his play
and in a schoolboy's hands that cupped that water
Merlin of the borders turned in his river grave
where Powsail Burn meets Tweed
the wild bees hummed
a brown bull grazing in the meads
a seeming peace, a soft summer's day
where I first read, and reading, saw the paper dissolve away.
and I say now years later, well mindful of the risk of mockery
that nothingness 1 am was then set a wandering
upon the windings of the ways
of the world
the garden
restless in life and seeking no end in death
for breath of the ages in the face of the air
still ghosts to the vitality
of our most early and unwritten forebears
whose wizardry still makes a lie of history
whose presence hints in every human word
who somehow reared and loosed an impossible beauty
enduring yet
among the green islands of the grey north sea
and I will not forget.
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