An Origin Like Water Read online

  Hunts without respite among fixed stars.

  And they prevail. To his undoing every day

  The essential sun

  Proceeds, but only to accommodate

  A tenant moon

  And he remains until the very break

  Of morning, absentee landlord of the dark.

  Mirages

  At various times strenuous sailing men

  Claim to have seen creatures of myth

  Scattering light at the furthest points of dawn—

  Creatures too seldom seen to reward the patience

  Of a night-watch, who provide no ready encore,

  But, like the stars, revisit generations.

  And kings riding to battle on the advice

  Of their ambition have seen crosses burn

  In the skylight of the winter solstice.

  Reasonable men however hold aloof,

  Doubting the gesture, speech and anecdote

  Of those who touch the Grail and bring no proof—

  Failing to recognize that in their fast

  Ethereal way mirages are

  This daylight world in summary and forecast.

  So a prince, a fledgling still, and far

  From coronation, kept at home,

  Will draw his sword and murder empty air—

  And should his father die and that death bring

  Him majesty, his games have been his school,

  His phantom war a forcing house of kings.

  The Pilgrim

  When the nest falls in winter, birds have flown

  To distant lights and hospitality:

  The pilgrim, with her childhood home a ruin,

  Shares their fate and, like them, suddenly

  Becomes a tenant of the wintry day.

  Looking back, out of the nest of stone

  As it tumbles, she can see her childhood

  Flying away like an evicted bird.

  Underground, although the ground is bare,

  Summer is turning on its lights. Spruce

  And larch and massive chestnut will appear

  Above her head in leaf: Oedipus

  Himself, cold and sightless, was aware

  Of no more strife or drama at Colonus.

  He became, when he could go no further,

  Just an old man hoping for warm weather.

  At journey’s end, in the waters of a shrine,

  No greater thing will meet her than the shock

  Of her own human face, beheaded in

  The holy pool. Steadily she must look

  At this unshriven thing among the bells

  And offerings and, for her penance, mark

  How her aspiring days, like fallen angels,

  Follow one another into the dark.

  Migration

  From August they embark on every wind

  Managing with grace

  This new necessity, widely determined

  On a landing place.

  Daredevil swallows, colored swifts go forth

  Like some great festival removing south.

  Cuckoo and operatic nightingale

  Meeting like trains of thought

  Concluding summer, in complete agreement, file

  Towards the sea at night

  And find at last their bright geometry

  (Triumphant overland) is not seaworthy.

  Sandpiper, finch and wren and goldencrest

  Whose baffled

  Movements start or finish summer now at last

  Return, single and ruffled,

  And raise their voices in a world of light

  And choose their loves as though determined to forget:

  As though upon their travels, as each bird

  Fell down to die, the sea

  Had opened, showing those above a graveyard

  Without sanctity—

  Birds and their masters, many beautiful,

  Huddled together without name or burial.

  Three Songs for a Legend

  1. A Lullaby for Lir’s Son

  O nurse when I was a rascal boy

  Bold February winds were snaffling gold

  Out of the crocuses. There in grief

  For the pretty, gaudy things I’d shout Stop Thief!

  And you would whisper Child, let be. Let be.

  Or else we’d come across a sapling tree

  To discover frost sipping its new blood.

  I’d join my arms around its perished wood

  And weep and you would say Now child, its place

  Is in a crackling hearth, not your embrace.

  And one April morning that was filled

  With mating tunes a nest of finches spilled,

  Which slipped its flowering anchor in a gale.

  I cupped one in my fingers. Dead. Small.

  But late that night you came to me on tiptoe

  And whispered child, child, the winds must blow.

  2. The Malediction

  Son of Lir as lonely are you now

  As the leaf when lightning strikes the tree

  And the bird when thunder breaks the bough.

  Now is lost, as bird and leaf and tree,

  Son of Lir your humanity.

  Now the steady shoulders, the bright arms

  You opened wide for battle and love’s sake—

  Encumbered to white wings by my charms—

  Must beat the air and the air must break

  With your human heart, your tender neck.

  The seed of man is barren in this body!

  The wit of man abandons this cursed brain!

  The blood of man turns back and flows muddy

  From this changing heart and this fair skin

  Is ruffling in the feathers of a swan.

  I take your youth under magic seizure.

  Farewell the joy of summer in a field.

  Farewell the simple seasons and their pleasure,

  Farewell true gold and the silk worm’s yield.

  Son of Lir I banish you this world

  To know the flinching cold of seas which spring

  Forgets, whose branch is ice, whose flower is snow

  And where the wild dead lie wintering

  Forever.

  3. Elegy for a Youth Changed to a Swan

  Now the March woods will miss his step,

  Finding out a way at spring’s start

  To break at once their bracken and their sleep,

  And now have lost, robbed of their rightful part,

  Some hawk a master’s hand, some maid a heart.

  Urchins of the sharp hawthorn, sparrows,

  Spiders webbed in hedges, brown

  Field mice, wheeled, sleeping in their furrows,

  Spared by the plow and stout with corn—

  These were familiars of Lir’s son

  No less than the stiff, aloof lily,

  The oak and the hawk, the Moy salmon

  On February mornings, unruly

  With new life and the flushed rowan

  Stooped with berries, October’s paragon.

  Sap of the green forest, like a sea,

  Rise in the sycamore and rowan,

  Rise in the wild plum and chestnut tree

  Until the woods become a broad ocean

  For my son in his wilderness, my swan,

  That he may see breaking on his breast

  And wings, not the waters of his exile,

  Nor the pawn of the wind, the cold crest,

  But branches of the white beam and the maple

  And boughs of the almond and the laurel.

  The King and the Troubadour

  A troubadour once lost his king

  Who took a carved lute

  And crossed the world and tuned its heart

  To hear it sing.

  Starved, wasted, worn, lost—

  His lute his one courage—

  He sang his youth to fumbling age,

  Fresh years to frost.

  In bitter spells his king
lay bound

  In bitter magic walled:

  Within a cruel shape swelled

  Love no sound,

  No sight, no troubadour searching

  Could set free. Fiercely

  Came he singing finally

  My king, my king.

  To the window the king’s head

  Came. The troubadour

  Dashed his lute on leaf and flower

  And fell dead.

  The king at one glance,

  Seeing ransom ruined,

  Majesty perplexed, pined

  In magic silence.

  The rain of God gathering

  Surrounded the smashed lute,

  Solving its fragmented heart

  Into spring.

  The king who in a cruel husk

  Of charms became as tragic

  Through monotonies of magic

  As the dusk,

  Each minstrel spring was called and sent

  No horrid head, but came

  Above the ground, a grassy atom

  Hearty as a giant.

  Requiem for a Personal Friend

  A striped philistine with quick

  Sight, quiet paws, today—

  In gorging on a feathered prey—

  Filleted our garden’s music.

  Such robbery in such a mouthful.

  Here rests, shoveled under simple

  Vegetables, my good example—

  Singing daily, daily faithful

  No conceit and not contrary—

  My best colleague, worst of all

  Was half digested, his sweet whistle

  Swallowed like a dictionary.

  Little victim, song for song—

  Who share a trade must share a threat—

  So I write to cheat the cat

  Who got your body, of my tongue.

  The Winning of Etain

  Etain twice a woman twice a queen

  Possessed of two lives and one love.

  Twice the loveliest woman ever seen.

  For whom two kings made Ireland a red grave.

  This story tells the winning of Etain

  A second time by Aengus: how he strove

  To own his own. A tale of tears. Of lovers

  Lost to each other for a thousand years.

  Aengus and Etain lived for each other’s pleasure,

  With gold for the head of Aengus as a king

  And gold so intricate in Etain’s hair

  No one could guess if the light scattering

  Were a woman’s beauty or a king’s treasure.

  They lived for summer and to dance and sing.

  But they were doomed when Fergus, the black Druid,

  Followed their happiness with fatal hatred.

  A summer’s night Etain in Aengus’s arms

  Slept, her head challenging the moon,

  Collecting more and more light from beams

  Which flared on lovers who would not love again

  For a thousand years. All at once the charms

  Of Fergus took effect: Unlucky Etain,

  Warm in Aengus’s arms where she lay,

  Lost her happiness, mislaid her joy.

  Her cheeks, blanched with light, were charmed away.

  Her long embracing arms convulsed. Her face

  Shriveled. Quick and violent decay

  Seized her limbs and her body’s grace

  Changed from a queen into a dragonfly,

  Changed to enameled wings and scales in a space

  Of minutes. Then she flew in a glimmer

  Away to discover flowers of the summer.

  Awakening, Aengus found instead of Etain

  His arms as empty as a spring nest

  Rifled by hawks and found his love gone—

  No hand to kiss and for his head no breast.

  From his window in a summer dawn

  Bright as blood, idly he watched the haste

  Of birds from branch to branch and below

  A dragonfly sipping at the dew.

  Morning danced on its back and decorated

  Every scaly tone twice as bright

  As hyacinths, above which it waited

  Wings singing, a busy thief of light

  And dew. A thousand insect colors scattered

  From its body and were deftly caught

  By summer flowers like another rain,

  And Aengus in that moment cried, “Etain—

  “My only love, changed to a brilliant toy

  Of sorcery, for you I will compose

  A bower of the four seasons and defy

  Our new despair. Autumn, the year’s close,

  Summer and spring will tangle for your joy,

  The frosty snowdrop twine with the rose,

  And January buds with fringed grasses

  Where you may stay under my jealous eyes.”

  At Aengus’s command the thing was done.

  Season followed season in his grief

  And for each one a sweet, particular crown

  Was stolen. Bough and petal, fruit and leaf,

  Were interwoven for his spellbound queen

  And flowered endlessly about his wife

  Who hummed night and day about her many

  Suitors, robbing each of dew and honey.

  And night and day, Aengus stayed beside,

  Asleep or waking, hawking or at rest,

  He watched the fertile bower and his bride

  Within, but thinking of her white breast,

  Her human body in his arms, he cried

  Bitterly above the bright twist

  Of flowers, but his fast tears were human—

  His love, an insect, drank them like the rain.

  And still the Druid’s hatred followed them

  Redoubled now because they could devise

  Happiness within destruction, a form

  Of beauty flourishing within disguise.

  So he contrived darkness and a storm

  Of winds colliding on the fresh seas

  To separate the crocus from the rose

  And interrupt the dragonfly’s repose.

  Suddenly, as Aengus watched, the wind

  Tore his green and intricate design

  Apart, scattered flowers and unwound

  Summer from spring, and wealthy autumn’s vine

  From winter leaves. He flung his hand

  Among stems broken and a rain

  Of petals. But the wind swept them towards

  The sea where its strength was bred, like birds.

  “O Etain my first love,” Aengus cried,

  “Stolen a second time, now who will build

  A bower for you over the cold tide?

  What blossoms of the country or the field

  What flower or fragrance can the sea provide?

  And where will you find dew in the salt

  Of the waves? I cast this wretched world behind

  And will not rest until my love is found!”

  At his cry the better powers took pity

  On him, loving him because his love

  Had once set out to cheat the travesty

  Of sorcery and triumphed, but could not save

  Etain twice. Invisibility

  Was their gift, exemption from the grave—

  As well they gave a thousand mortal years

  To Aengus and Etain, unlucky lovers.

  Like a petal on the flowers sipped

  By her on bright days at Aengus’s side,

  Etain fluttered while the north wind clipped

  Her colored scales and the sea cried

  Beneath her. Once she struggled, wings trapped

  In the beak of a scavenger, but she escaped

  And tossed, a magic atom, on the surface

  Of the water, lost in the water’s race.

  Etain at last, baffled and long weary,

  Was wildly buffeted, now on a snowy

  Now on a stifling breeze, until clearly

  A green and
quiet shore began, whose dewy

  Grasses sprung out of the wind’s way

  And there found flowers in hosts, scarlet and showy

  Rivals for her wings, petals to soothe

  Her misery and honey for her mouth.

  And there she flew above a royal palace

  Whose roof, involved and circled like a rose,

  Bore mosaics like a clutch of crocuses

  And marble whiter than the lily grows.

  No wonder then she searched for dew and spice

  Among its tiles, mistaking them for flowers

  And tumbled through a cranny, all unseen

  To splash in the bright wine of another queen.

  And by that error found another womb,

  Another spell of life, another shape

  For the queen lifting up the same

  Infested gold cup to her lip

  Swallowed insect, wine and all, while the fume

  Of the delicate fermented grape

  Disguised its tenant. But magic had its way

  And worked its charm, and swelled the queen’s belly.

  Mysteriously she came to be with child,

  Another queen, wife of another king

  And in another age. She grew heavy and mild.

  Contented with the chance, never suspecting

  She was fertile from the wine defiled

  And not a king’s embrace. And so in spring

  Was born human, from a magic womb,

  Etain into the world a second time.

  And so she grew to girlhood cherishing

  All captive things and grew to hate the forest

  Because its horned boughs might be concealing

  A bold antelope in charmed arrest.

  And wept on summer nights imagining

  The lion howling from his heaven, cased

  In stars; but never guessed from where her pity

  Sprung, from what unknown captivity.

  Where a river rushed into the sea, on a ledge

  Of stone, Etain would sit in the evening glow,

  Her cheeks as fresh as berries from the hedge,

  Her arms white as a single fall of snow,

  Her thighs like stems of a flower. And to the edge

  Of the water where outrivaled lilies grew

  On a summer night (in every detail the same

  As that on which he lost her) Aengus came.

  Invisible he watched her silver comb,

  Chased with gold, calm her golden hair.

  Invisible, he brought to mind a time

  When she had bound it up for him with fair