The lay of St Colmcille
crafted with tourist board fervour & precision
the 6in figure, black totem in Irish turf
smooth & hard as coal, regards impassive
the passage of our days
Colmcille, dove of the church, better
known by his Latin tag Columba, apostle
of the penitent Finnian, descended
from Niall of the nine hostages
we pause at the entrance to the cave
to hear the shipping news, high winds
in Finisterre & Shannon, the ticket
booth is closed until Easter
throughout medieval times Brendan
was a patron of sailors, Adomnan
writes that he visited Columba, some
35 years his junior, on the island of Hinba
we pause at the entrance, an ogham-
inscribed stone: Ardfert
means height of the graves:
Bishop Finnian raises his hand in blessing
frustrated, we pass over
an opportunity rare in these travels
the sun striking to the heart
at dawn on the equinox
several of Finnian's apostles had died
before his lifetime, or were not yet born -
an artefact that has survived
is an elaborate bucket, one inch high
Colmcille, with crafted passive gaze,
gift of another wife, given
even then to random violence,
Irish whiskey, English ale
Brendan the navigator journeyed
westward to a land of promise
& may have found America
before the Vikings, above 900 years
before Cristobal Colon, conquistador
named in English for Columba
& for whom the capital district
of the new, western, overdeveloped
world, a university, a record company
(& from that a broadcast system &
global purveyors of what is called news),
a land known for production & export
of coffee, cocaine & crime
Colmcille, of course, founded the colony
of monks upon Iona, from where
was established that other Holy Isle, Lindisfarne
which is where I, or he at least for whom
I was named, comes in, tramping
the northlands, homestead
to homestead, bringing the good news
life, your life, mine, anyone's, life
itself is an endless ramble, a poem
of infinite length, or rather
of finite but unknown duration, those
who wait for the Christ's second coming
do so in vain - he has been
many times, he for whom our era, confusingly,
is dated, being neither first nor last
before we progress further in this passage
a note on pronunciation:
the first syllable bears the stress - Colm -kill,
not Colm- seal , a misunderstanding
deriving from the French influence
understood in English, foreign to the Gaelic
though interesting and perhaps surprising
to note in passing the relation
between Irish & Latin, the forms
of Columba's name in both languages
bearing the meaning dove; related
names being Colm & its diminutive
Colman, little dove, the commonest
name in the Irish time of saints, with
hundreds of individuals recorded,
showing perhaps the popularity
of Colmcille (next most common
the diminutive of Ea - Aodhan,
or Aidan): in personal legend
the child whose observations
mutate into my memories
stands awed at the head of cliffs
dropping to a crinkled, almost
soundless sea, with eagles
sweeping far above the water, far
below my feet - the cliffs those
of Slieve League, near Glencolmcille,
an Irish-speaking village in a quiet
valley - here too Columba,
famed for his prophecies, founded
a monastery; a small cathedral
and Benedictine abbey on Iona
were destroyed by Protestants
in the year Mary of Scots
confronted Knox, Madrid
became capital of Spain and in
Moscow the finials of St Basil
were applied (a year later
England, by an act of piracy,
became involved in the new trade
of slavery, while in Holland Pieter Brueghel
painted the Triumph of Death) -
by this desecration was one
of Colmcille's prophecies fulfilled
those who predicted the world's end
on a given date were not wrong, if disappointed
they failed to notice, as did we all,
that the world indeed ended on that day
throughout this narrative we hear
the sounds of the sea, soughing
of the wind, the cry of gulls
and guillemots, Colmcille
was also a prolific poet and some
of his poems in both Gaelic
and Latin survive, the finest
achievement of Celtic scribing,
the so-called Book of Kells, was compiled
on Iona in his honour, but not as
was sometime claimed by his hand,
unless he lived to 180; the ingenious
symbology of ogham was devised
perhaps as early as 300 years
after Christ by Latin-speaking Irish
clerics, a system of straight strokes
carved on adjoining sides
of an obelisk, notches easier
to inscribe than the complex shapes
of received letters
for Colmcille that desecration wrought
an end to 1000 years in that dim place
where saints might intervene for the living
or the dead - ora pro nobis
like Brendan, the cliffs look westwards,
raising towering heads, highest in Europe
at its utmost edge, to see
beyond far horizons to the gathering
clouds of sunset and the fleets
of fishermen borne homeward
on prevailing winds & tides -
what hopes borne in, what dashed
for waiting loves in those glens?
the sea is indifferent, its waters turned
by accident of astral physics, imputed
anger or benignity, an epithet transferred
what instruments did those ogham-writers wield?
if iron, who the smelters, what the trade
between them? what foundry and what sandy
mould: flues running through the peat
or towers like those of Glendalough?
for Colm read column - Trajan's, Nelson's,
Cleopatra's - seafarers all: here
in the generation of Brueghel, Mary, Knox
a sea party sent from Spain to conquer
upstart Protestant & pirate queen
came to its final grief on shores
of Achill, Galway, Donegal
our 6in Colmcille, upright, passive-gazed
holds quill & scroll, folds
of habit, warm against the western wind,
fall sheer to his feet: against
him a stork leans, long-necked,
long-billed, preening or in
repose, like the lamb of Agnes,
Cuthbert's goose - a symbol
but of what? mysteries
of the social organism. Iona,
Achill, Hinba, Farne, craggy
specks in the western sea - here
Columba, dove of the Christians' ark
finds landfall, scratches a nomad's life
among the seals & the gulls,
waybread, thrift & spurge
spume on salty wrack
among basalt stacks
gannets' wheel & dive
light of wild skies on moving water
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