Quest

The office of medicine man is not hereditary
among a considerable number of primitive
peoples ... This means that all over the world
magico-religious powers are held to be
obtainable either spontaneously (sickness,
dream, chance encounter with a source of
“power,” etc.) or deliberately (quest).

-- Mercea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic
Techniques of Ecstasy, 22

When Minos, judge of souls in Dante’s
Inferno, warns Virgil and Dante
about entering Hell, Virgil replies,

... “That is not your concern
It is his fate to enter every door.
(Inferno, V 21-2, transl. Ciardi)

***

For half of my life the quest flowed
underground, its ends unknown
to me, its means so upside-down,
the way a fool inverts a king’s gold
crown into a potty of mired sounds.
Untimely ripped from my parents’
God, I salvaged those tossed angels
as best I could, plundering every bed
from which it seemed they’d fled,
like a blue moon falling on blood-western
waves. For years the quest was what I
failed to wing, a magnitude I was too
busy barreling down to utter, much
less for more than one night sustain
But when I’d had enough of what
I never could quite find enough,
the quest appeared in opened books,
in that thirst which slaked in
reading them, each book an isle
of sufficient blue to praise new
Gods with freshened lips. In surfacing
the quest exchanged one lucre for
a next, the clout of former nights
smelt down to unfiltered umbrage
which hums low a wild humility,
the sense of who rules what below
and how little my shape counts in
the swirl of years I’m lent. The quest
topside has woven my days into
a productive, fertile loom,
jaunting across and down the inside
pages of a life which I can only
seam, my voice astride the power
chords of dragons far below
the range of human throats,
beings no moat or ramparts will
ever full challenge, much less name.
That quest I daily name as if a shore,
and, thus hallowed, free its keel
once more to harrow what it once revelled,
crossing oceans whose marge I am.
Who knows just what I’ll say
tomorrow, what strange sooth
will brogue my tongue with salt?
For years the quest rode me
underground on swells of big-night
sound: For more years now I’ve
saddled Uffington with verbs
to gallop back across those
ancient mating grounds,
singing here all that I found.
And this I suspect is just two
thirds of it, the quest I mean:
just what wings will grow
from the last lines of these poems
some night I’ll drown and dream.




THE SECRETS OF THE SEA

— Lady Gregory, A Book of Saints and Wonders, 1906, Chapter 5: “Great Wonders of the Olden Time”

There are three waters of the sea now around the world, The first of them is a seven-shaped sea under the belly of the world, and against that sea hell is roaring and raising up a shout in die valley. The second is a sea green and bright round about the earth on every side; ebbing and flood it has and casting up of fruits. The third sea is a sea aflame, nine winds are let out of the heavens to call it from its sleep; three score and ten and four hundred songs its eaves sing, and it awakened; a noise of thunder comes roaring out of its wave-voice; flooding and ever flooding it is from the beginning of the world, and with all that it is never full but of a Sunday. In its sleep it is till the thunders of the winds are awakened by the coming of God’s Sunday from heaven, and by the music of the angels. Along with those there are many kinds of seas around the earth on every side; a red sea having many precious stones, bright as Flood, well coloured, golden, between the lands of Egypt and the lands of India. A sea bright, many-sanded, of the colour of snow, in the north around the islands of Sabarn. So great is the strength of its waves that they break and scatter to the height of the clouds. Then a sea waveless, black as a beetle; no ship reaching it has escaped from it again but one boat only by the lightness of its going and the strength of its sails; shoals of beasts there are lying in that sea. A sea there is in the ocean to the south of the island of Ebian. At the first of the summer it rises in flood till it ebbs at the coming of winter; half the year it is in flood it is, and half the year always ebbing. Its beasts and its monsters mourn at the time of its ebbing and they fall into sadness and sleep. They awake and welcome its flooding, and the wells and the streams of the world increase; going and coming again they are through its valleys.



THE SINGERS CHANGE,
THE MUSIC GOES ON

Linda Gregg

No one really dies in the myths.
No world is lost in the stories.
Everything is lost in the retelling,
in being wondered at. We grow up
and grow old in our land of grass
and blood moons, birth and goneness.
A place of absolutes. Of returning.
We live our myth in the recurrence,
pretending we will return another day.
Like this morning coming every morning.
The truth is we come back as a choir.
Otherwise Eurydice would be forever
in the dark. Our singing brings her
back. Our dying keeps her alive.

- from The Best American Poetry 2001,
orig. published in AGNI


UFFINGTON HORSE

2003

The locals say I am the beast
St. George slew, his white sword nailing
My heart to this hill. Well, time weaves
Tales around the hearts of men, but
I am no altar to the need
To kill the winged insides of
Every kiss. Recall how kings of
Old were taken up the hill to
Mount a pure white mare, his flesh in
Hers turned sceptre beneath the white
Applause of stars. I Rhiannon
Ride this high ground like the crest of
The ninth wave. My saddle is a
High hard throne -- mount me, if you dare.
Plunge your song in salt everywhere.





BADASS ANGELS

from “A Breviary of Guitars,” 1999

Summer 1983:
What music we
made in that
tiny hot room
on acoustic
guitars was
combustible in
a way no
prior or further
flights of song
could light:
As the sun
rose behind Kay
at the ocean
after a night
of delicious
surrender to
oceans along
the isthmus
of our bodies,
so what a
song like “Savage
Hearts” struck
flint to the
composite tinder
of our lives:
Two guys in
their mid 20s
embittered by
lost love & now
ready to howl
it loud & hard:
Rightburn in
the passion that
gripped our
guitars and
teased the flame
of songs up
from fallen
timbers, the
same old chords
from a million
same old songs
finding a new
gradient within
the music, a
beat which pounds
down and rises,
not hurrying
not stopping
but pleasuring
if you will a
center which
burns blue to
red: A killer
song, if you
will, at least
when we played
it with hearts
slapped awake
by possibility,
rising from
suburban
ordinaries on
hawk wings
up the towering
cloudbank aeries
of summer up
where the air
is thin and
cold and clear
as ice and
the archangels
glow blue and
red and the
final chorus is
a sheer swoop
down at 300
miles per hour
fixed on that
prey of lost
love: Badass
angels with
spurs & stallions
riding the
narrow edge
of anger between
loss and fury
with only the
hooves of song
to find safe
passage through
the night we
invoked:
Everything else
we added —
singer, drums,
a name, gigs —
Were all mere
accoutrement:
We both knew
the forges where
we crossed guitars:
Just not how
to tend them:
For as soon
as we crashed
down the last
chord & high
fived the future
we heard there,
the wax on our
wings kissed an
subtle urgent
fire: After practice
the nights that
unfolded were easy
because we’d
already stormed their
walls in song: Our
hearts knuckled and
muscular as we
slap some cologne
over the sweat
and rooster up the hair
and speed off
to the bars: O
we were young
and angry and
horny, our hearts
sure in the howl
of the edge: Take
some speed, smoke
a couple of bowls
of pot, pour down
a bunch of
Bud longnecks
with shots of
Old Bushmills:
That was the
correct way
to triangulate
and maze the night,
our eyes burning
behind heavy sensual
lids, as if one
glint of something
pure would burn
us to cinders:
Just a couple
of the boys
in the band
cutting into the
crowd at
Fern Park Station
like 2 blades
of moon, partying
a while before
plucking what
hung heavy and
ripe from the
pussy tree: It was
easy to score
when you
had already soared:
Four In Legion
onstage rocking
the Stones’ “Start
Me Up” and George
Thorogood’s “Bad
to the Bone” &
Ziggy walloping
his Strat like
a 19 year old
girl drunk in the
back of his van:
For what’s fire
but a bridge
between fury
and doom? Forget
finery: The
makers toil deep
in the sulphur
of their forges
grimed with sweat
and char: I
was tethered to
horses long
turned to salt
by my past: Cindy
a cipher of
other losses I
refused to read
by any light
of day: Kept
running into
her in varied
Winter Park bars
& we’d smile say
hello & then all
the walls came
tumblin’ down
between us:
The next day
shoveling purchase
orders into the
corporate forge
my heart hammering
for fear of losing
what had long
fled: And I
wonder how song
could ever suffice
for swoon: Out
in the bars
at night feeling the
ice of other
rages, the long
winter passages
in Spokane where
the song had died
in an otherwise
trackless waste,
my nights then
walking isolate
& alone through
a frozen dead
city of sleeping
citizens & dead
drunks & dead
fucks & madness
gripping down
from the north
with its bower
of absolute
zero: Draughts
of that in the
iced Stoli I
knocked back
listening to bands
overplay and strut
on other wings:
Cover songs
covering it all
up: The new songs
I was finding
(or which found
me) dipped in
that cold past
like a pen:
That’s the breath
of art: A wind
from inside
zero: It walks
the far boundary
& calls it
a homeland: Outside
summer a night
in full humid
fury, streets still
glistening with
eddies of storm
distant lightning
trilling violent
& aghast at
this order of
things & the
song making all
of that anew
& dangerous &
wildly critical
of my every
waste &
dalliance: So
when I went
out again with
Cathy to dance
again I was
hostile to her
endearments, as
if dancing were
a drowse into
love’s dungeon:
She gets drunk
real fast & I
tow her back
to my place to
nibble her clit
on the living
room floor &
Graham Parker’s
“Squeezing Out
Sparks” on the
stereo & she
falls asleep
while all the
blades are flashing
above: Next day
we hit a
matinee while storms
wrack the city
& it’s a love
scene from
a movie I recoil
from: Back at
her apartment
she pulls me from
door to bed in
one long motion
yanking down
my pants & hauling
my cock up
into her dark
furrow: I slam
away as she
grips my ass
grunting & her
big breasts mashed
against my
chest & then
bouncing every
which way
abandoning
herself to what’s
hard and harder
and thus crueler
in me: I harden
& shout or
bark this
bright angry
brass angel
which peals white
from the top
of my skull
then lets it
pour jazzy and
hot, a syrup
filling & spilling
all over her
thighs: I want
to go but for
her the sex just
opens the door
to more real
stuff, endearments
in late afternoon
& baby talk with
the cat & get
me outta here
as I fling out
at 6 p.m. enraged
& ready to
sing about it:



DRAGON’S TAIL

2003

For arrested drunks like me, there
Are only two ways to live -- The
One astride the dragon’s tail, the
Other rowing lifelong here. When
I’m riding red I’m far afield
Burning cities, hearts, and sense to
Char, backwarding on the blade which
Slices off my own ass, grabbing
All I cannot have. Off tail I’m
Pure drollery, the sea before dawn,
Nothing in my moves to catch the
Torching eye. Drunks climb on that wild
Thirst and never wake; their nightmare
Flies for life. Let them sear in soar.
My living’s calm though words here roar.



ST. BRENDAN AND THE HEATHEN GIANT

(In episode 4 of The Voyage of St. Brendan) Brendan, having had a ship built for him, finds the exceptionally large head of a dead man on the beach. Its forehead measures five feet across. When Brendan asks what kind of life he has led, the man’s head answers that he was a hundred feet tall and very strong. He was a heathen who waded through the sea to rob ships. This he did for a living. In a heavy storm which whipped up the waves to extreme heights he was drowned. Brendan offers to pray for the giant, and to beg God to revive him so that he may be baptized. Once that is done, the giant may even, if he lives to praise God, find forgiveness for his sins, and eventually ascend to paradise. The giant refuses; his is afraid that in his new life he might not be able to withstand the temptation of sin. What if he started robbing again? He would be a lot worse off then as, according to the giant, Christians are punished much more severely in hell than pagans. Moreover, the prospect of having to suffer the pain of death as second time frightens him. He wants to go back to his torments / poor companions in the place of darkness. He departs with Brendan’s best wishes. Brendan then proceeds on his way.



BLACK ANGUS AND THE SAINT

The Works of Fiona Macleod, Volume IV, Iona

Elsewhere I have told how a good man of Iona sailed along the coast one Sabbath afternoon with the Holy Book, and put the Word upon the seals of Soa: and, in another tale, how a lonely man fought with a sea-woman that was a seal: as, again, how two fishermen strove with the sea-witch of Earraid: and, in “The Dan-nan-Ron,” of a man who went mad with the sea-madness, because of the seal-blood that was in his veins, he being a MacOdrum of Uist, and one of the Sliochd nan Ron, the Tribe of the Seal. And those who have read the tale, twice printed, once as “The Annir Choille,” and again as “Cathal of the Woods,” will remember how, at the end, the good hermit Molios, when near death in his sea-cave of Arran, called the seals to come out of the wave and listen to him, so that he might tell them the white story of Christ; and how in the moonshine, with the flowing tide stealing from his feet to his knees, the old saint preached the gospel of love, while the seals crouched upon the rocks, with their brown eyes filled with glad tears: and how, before his death at dawn, he was comforted by hearing them splashing to and fro in the moon-dazzle, and calling one to the other, “We, too, are of the sons of God.”

What has so often been written about is a reflection of what is in the mind: and though stories of the seals may be heard from the Rhinns of Islay to the Seven Hunters (and I first heard that of the MacOdrums, the seal-folk, from a Uist man), I think, that it was because of what I heard of the sea-people on Iona, when I was a child, that they have been so much with me in remembrance.

In the short tale of the Moon-child, I told how two seals that had been wronged by a curse which had been put upon them by Columba, forgave the saint. and gave him a sore-won peace. I recall another (unpublished) tale, where a seal called Domnhuil Dhu—a name of evil omen—was heard laughing one Hallowe’en on the rocks below the ruined abbey, and calling to the creatures of the sea that God was dead: and how the man who heard him laughed, and was therewith stricken with paralysis, and so fell sidelong from the rocks into the deep wave, and was afterwards found beaten as with hammers and shredded as with sharp fangs.

But, as most characteristic, I would rather tell here the story of Black Angus, though the longer tale of which it forms a part has been printed before.

One night, a dark rainy night it was, with an uplift wind battering as with the palms of savage hands the heavy clouds that hid the moon, I went to the cottage near Spanish Port, where my friend Ivor Maclean lived with his old deaf mother. He had reluctantly promised to tell me the legend of Black Angus, a request he had ignored in a sullen silence when he and Padruic Macrae and I were on the Sound that day. No tales of the kind should be told upon the water.

When I entered, he was sitting before the flaming coal-fire; for on Iona now, by decree of MacCailein Mòr, there is no more peat burned.

“You will tell me now, Ivor?” was all I said.

“Yes; I will be telling you now. And the reason why I never told you before was because it is not a wise or a good thing to tell ancient stories about the sea while still on the running wave. Macrae should not have done that thing. It may be we shall suffer for it when next we go out with the nets. We were to go to-night; but, no, not I, no, no, for sure, not for all the herring in the Sound.”

“Is it an ancient sgeul, Ivor?”

“Ay. I am not for knowing the age of these things. It may be as old as the days of the Féinn, for all I know. It has come down to us. Alasdair MacAlasdair of Tiree, him that used to boast of having all the stories of Colum and Brigdhe, it was he told it to the mother of my mother, and she, to me.”

“What is it called?”

“Well, this and that; but there is no harm in saying it is called the Dark Nameless One.”

“The Dark Nameless One!

“It is this way. But will you ever have heard of the MacOdrums of Uist?

“Ay; the Sliochd-nan-ròn.

“That is so. God knows. The Sliochd nan-ròn . . . the progeny of the Seal. . . . Well, well , no man knows what moves in the shadow of life. And now I will be telling you that old ancient tale, as it was given to me by the mother of my mother.”

On a day of the days, Colum was walking alone by the sea-shore. The monks were at the hoe or the spade, and some milking the kye, and some at the fishing. They say it was on the first day of the Faoilleach Geamhraidh, the day that is called Am Fhéill Brighde, and that they call Candlemas over yonder.

The holy man had wandered on to where the rocks are, opposite to Soa. He was praying and praying; and it is said that whenever he prayed aloud, the barren egg in the nest would quicken, and the blighted bud unfold, and the butterfly break its shroud.

Of a sudden he came upon a great black seal, lying silent on the rocks, with wicked eyes.

“My blessing upon you, O Ròn,” he said, with the good kind courteousness that was his. “Droch spadadh ort,” answered the seal, “A bad end to you, Colum of the Gown.”

“Sure now,” said Colum angrily, “I am knowing by that curse that you are no friend of Christ, but of the evil pagan faith out of the north. For here I am known ever as Colum the White, or as Colum the Saint; and it is only the Picts and the wanton Normen who deride me because of the holy white robe I wear.”

“Well, well,” replied the seal, speaking the good Gaelic as though it were the tongue of the deep sea, as God knows it may be for all you, I, or the blind wind can say; “well, well, let that thing be: it’s a wave-way here or a wave-way there. But now, if it is a druid you are, whether of fire or of Christ, be telling me where my woman is, and where my little daughter.”

At this, Colum looked at him for a long while. Then he knew.

“It is a man you were once, O Ron?”

“Maybe ay and maybe no.”

“And with that thick Gaelic that you have, it will be out of the north isles you come?”

“That is a true thing.”

“Now I am for knowing at last who and what you are. You are one of the race of Odrum the Pagan?”

“Well, I am not denying it, Colum. And what is more, I am Angus MacOdrum, Aonghas mac Torcall mhic Odrum, and the name I am known by is Black Angus.”

“A fitting name too,” said Colum the Holy, “because of the black sin in your heart, and the black end God has in store for you.”

At that Black Angus laughed.

“Why is the laughter upon you, Man-Seal?”

“Well, it is because of the good company I’ll be having. But, now, give me the word: Are you for having seen or heard of a woman called Kirsteen M’Vurich?”

“Kirsteen—Kirsteen—that is the good name of a nun it is, and no sea-wanton!”

“O, a name here or a name there s soft sand. And so you cannot be for telling me where my woman is?”

“No.”

“Then a stake for your belly, and nails through your hands, thirst on your tongue, and the corbies at your eyne!”

And, with that, Black Angus louped into the green water, and the hoarse wild laugh of him sprang into the air and fell dead upon the shore like a wind-spent mew.

Colum went slowly back to the brethren, brooding deep. “God is good,” he said in a low voice, again and again; and each time that he spoke there came a daisy into the grass, or a bird rose, with song to it for the first time, wonderful and sweet to hear.

As he drew near to the House of God he met Murtagh, an old monk of the ancient race of the isles.

“Who is Kirsteen M’Vurich, Murtagh?” he asked.

“She was a good servant of Christ, she was, in the south isles, O Colum, till Black Angus won her to the sea.”

And when was that?”

“Nigh upon a thousand years ago.”

“But can mortal sin live as long as that?”

“Ay, it endureth. Long, long ago, before Oisin sang, before Fionn, before Cuchullin, was a glorious great prince, and in the days when the Tuatha-de-Danann were sole lords in all green Banba, Black Angus made the woman Kirsteen M’Vurich leave the place of prayer and go down to the sea-sbore, and there he leaped upon her and made her his prey, and she followed him into the sea.”

“And is death above her now?”

“No. She is the woman that weaves the sea-spells at the wild place out yonder that is known as Earraid: she that is called the seawitch.”

“Then why was Black Angus for the seeking her here and the seeking her there?”

“It is the Doom. It is Adam’s first wife she is, that sea-witch over there, where the foam is ever in the sharp fangs of the rocks.”

“And who will he be?”

His body is the body of Angus, the son of Torcall of the race of Odrum, for all that a seal be is to the seeming; but the soul of him is Judas.”

“Black Judas, Murtagh?”

“Ay, Black Judas, Colum.”

But with that, Ivor Macrae rose abruptly from before the fire, saying that he would speak no more that night. And truly enough there was a wild, lone, desolate cry in the wind, and a slapping of the waves one upon the other with an eerie laughing sound, and the screaming of a seamew that was like a human thing.

So I touched the shawl of his mother, who looked up with startled eyes and said, “God be with us”; and then I opened the door, and the salt smell of the wrack was in my nostrils, and the great drowning blackness of the night.