-
for the place -- its uncompromising oneness,
- wetness and greenness
(and for you,
- my companion)
More things are learnt
in the woods than from books; trees and rocks will teach
you things not to be heard elsewhere. You will see for
yourselves that honey may
be gathered from stones and oil from the hardest rock...
St. Bernard of Clairvaux
- 1
The ribbon of road,
Unwound like spilt tape
Stretching back -
And what we were driving towards ...
As you gestured over to the place of your birth,
Invisible in the hot misty distance -
And then, as the engine spluttered, slowing
Rattling... as it steamed - and cracked,
Rod-spun, bits clattering on to the tarmac
Moments, a mile later. And is it ever
What you thought was happening?
The journey is its own; and we journey it.
Even, before we do? Or it thickens around us
Weighing the balance, and waiting
For the next word, phrase, thing. Green doors.
A pit-tanned droll smiling face, and a white van.
A white van for the borderlands, and we're in it.
This is the land. This is the country...
The rolling, curved, veined sheep-dotted hill heights
Heavy blue haulage - visible alchemy
With its tank-wheels, and escort
(coagulate, grinding uphill under the sky)
As the land builds. To the Increase. Remember.
To the Lakes... and can you think like water?
Fluid, swirling - soul - become as it
Dissolving into grey by twilight water
Leaden-limbed, drawn down into it; lapping
All the sheep-loud night before dawn...
And can all we are of heaven and earth
Combine now? Told, this is the time, now
'And as I make love to you, I give you heaven
And as you receive my love, you give me heaven'
Or, you say it: 'the strangeness of truth'.
The strangeness of a tree within a tree.
Northwards, towards the border -
And the truth is a rear-view mirror
(patched on, drooping, in red tape)
And the law is: everything signifies
And can you read the signs?
To see back, without being swamped -
And can we hold this moment
Without the past breaking in?
Can we risk ourselves
Without hiding, or pretending?
As it flows towards us. Its edge. Ever-closening
(outside us now, here now, at its mercy)
Its gateway: twin windowless turrets
Of pale red stone - flanking the road:
Pulled into her heart, and lifting him out
As the land opens. Flat. Wide open. Zone.
Yellow gorse flowers, and sunned dry grass;
Pylons, and distant pines
strangely light
And still, it could be anything
Still-lit... blanked words... Boreland
But it means, ahead is a great country
And we are for the Great Water's crossing
We are for the earth - these mountains
Slowly rising
as if dreamt
Rugged, forested, green summits
These mountains of the heart, by their names
Ben Arthur
The forest in your heart I wanted to embrace,
Cracked open, a little wider... and on the ground
Shirt-blown, lying
Where we were two saplings, barely rooted,
Like straw in the blast; and it held us
And was father
was a father, too
- I never knew the heart could be so big
So limitlessly mountainous, and without pride
Holding the smallest yellow flowers
And with the sky at one, above it -
Lingering, spelt in your hand... as it suffused in,
Quietly, overwhelming us beyond us
With the strength of its gentleness
green, grey
Sky darkening before rain, slate by the loch,
(where the gulls were white, vivid, flung, flying
against the sky they merged to)
In this far country of the eagle
Where Castle Stalker stands
Alone on its island
With its single slate-wet turret
And the bird, with its great shaggy wings
Spreads against the pearl-blue heaven of cloud
Above the ribbon of road
and the first drops of rain.
2
The brown sail of the tent
Unfurled, spread - stretched and pegged
Behind a thin wind-screen of trees -
And a briny, effluent stream. Loch edge.
(As close as we could get).
Before the rain set in. And the dark.
The water gleaming through the green-leaved beeches...
And the dark like no dark you could see,
Only darker. Night. And the race
Over the hissing black headlit road
For fourteen miles, for food - for nothing.
For being here.
(Heating up soup in a swarm of midges,
In the back of the van)
Is being stopped.
To earth. Survival earth. And after rain, mud.
And the water carrier burst -
Sampling the tea-coloured stream,
And squatting on our heels,
Like the first here.
Like Beaker People. Like Indians.
(And over to our right, Crow Island).
And the loch in the sun like the sea ...
briefly
My mind of fire is dying,
Someone put it in among some stones
Before we came, in a charred tight circle
In among the blackened remains of kindling -
When your fire has purged and bared you,
It has done its work. Let it go, now.
It is not what is needed here.
But a mind of earth... in the beginning.
And yours is water and feeling,
Say our invisible parents: and it's fragile,
To be slow, or as quick, to miss the point -
To force it into 'being good'
To deny each other what we deny in ourselves
To be like strangers, and to ourselves -
Given this chance, this place
To feel what wrongs the sunlight
as it slips
And how easily the whole foundation shifts,
As if kicked -
And bow to it: clouded over: broken
As we gather the white quartz stones
To make a circle, with a heart-stone -
A hearth stone - at its centre
On a bared scrap of grass, where a fire was
(Vanished now): stone by stone, laid, placed
'And that the white
that the light
brought to earth
Become rock that holds,
rock that heals'
- you walking... green, like an answer
green everywhere
green in the light
Bracken - ferns - bog iris stalks
now we walk this road
with the loch beside us
green bathing our eyes - among spots of colour
rose bay willow herb, pink sorrel, and foxgloves;
hushed to a black butterfly, poised -
with its dark red fringe-of-wings
spread, quivering; and white
dotted encircled glyphs
on either wing
a perfect square of lichen-covered rock
and in the rock, where it rises, sheer -
in a cleft in the rock, narrower than a finger
a sprig of beech
fresh, with its leaves
a beech tree in miniature
under the sky
dove-greying, like the water
As the light slants,
shifts,
slides towards rain
And our demons come and go;
Wrestling them: to name them:
Mistrust, Fear, Control
And to realize how our words
Use us, thinking we use them
And how to speak heart
Attuned to its silence, its space
That silences you -
To find yourself surprised,
To find yourself as if belittled,
Small as you are, new, becoming
Now - as its moment is - (and can
You turn yourself around?) as fast
As that old unwanted self reacts back
to that edge
Thread, of its again-finding, or loss -
And how you said it when you said
"When I go into my head, I lose God,'' every time -
And to find Him here
In the sound of the stream, the wind in the leaves,
That owl, hooting...
And you found Him
Like you lose Him,
Like you lose your heart -
'So may we be open here'
(and I found you, in the dark)
3
Wet chrysalis. Wet womb chrysalis,
Waking to it, and to this -
Raw closeness, and of earth. Death, is it?
Or greyness, leading to green;
Grey water, the loch glassy -
The loch, a mirror.
Grey voice, thread silver: whisper
The loch's inflowing, and the leaves'
Behind these eyes, become a throat
Stirring to speech.
And green is death, too
Into the blackness, and out of it:
Yew shadow, evergreen
mystery of green
Of grey, edging, invisibly -
Essence of invisibility
merging visibly
- the sheep, standing, staring
grazing among the trees
nosing closer
black-nosed, innocently
nibbling at the branches
with the water behind them...
behind their eyes
staring into mine
with what never dies -
This place, alive with all its memory
invisibly
Ancient as its first comers,
Its clawing glaciers -
Its sacred overflowing spring
cascading
crystal, down
Ben Cruachan, now
Its power station hidden
Its rising twin peaks
Creviced by a waterfall
High under its static smoke-fleece of cloud,
High green, and the line of its waterfall
Cloud-light, white trailing, moving as in a dream
And under the mountain
(as the road bends road)
On its faery islet - Kilchurn, in the sun
Belying its own history
Its Campbell shell
Imaged in false light
Beside St. Conan's, built late,
Inside its corbel of owl-like sphinx-like
Gargoyles - is light, feminine light
(where the Bruce lie dreaming in waxwork stone)
The pulpit, with its encircled cross
And where the altar would have been:
A plain empty table: plain, unstained windows
With the trees for green they reflect
Green tree-light, Cathar light
A church for women, and the pew you sit in
For the healing of time...
Carved towards the loch, on its parapet edge
Of raised stone, one stone for each word
Thy / Sun / Shall / Not / Go / Down
He said
- even in the rain
in the grey of Oban
Columba's green, beckoning
and the green etheric
spread over the land
like a single tartan
and what stands out in it, alive -
soft brown Highland cattle
and a pair of swans on Loch Etive
(distant, specked... towards the farther shore, together)
and the cloudscape and mountainscape,
blended
and the tip of mountain and cloud
drawn down towards each other -
Places so small they could be a hoax
And at Cladich, the river there
Under the bridge: tanned coloured peat water
Rushing, pouring: the surface slipping down,
Rock-strewn, to a scur of white foam
- white foam, out of tan water
two thick tongues of it
the river, tawny
the river, a wet lion -
Divining the future in swords
And the way through a lightning struck tower
The way the tunnel is yours, now
And the tower
Bared to its bone, its foundation:
We become like a falling landscape
Of inner monoliths, crumbling
In this exile of ourselves, alone, for real
Withering to the truth, and the taste of whisky
Malt-soft, like fire -
(instead of the wood, too wet to burn)
And the rain, the rain unceasing
All night in the tent-spattered dark
And the byrne, with its drumming gurgle
Where the water comes down over stones
And in the dark, voices
Voices, but you could not hear them
Voices, in the water - or in the air around
Shouting, singing, high-pitched as the Sidh
As if before a catastrophe -
Ghosting the downpour
you shivered, awake in
(in the darkness of wet
you drew me to
come, calling out
to the stream
where its water
reaches the loch's incoming
long, wide, wavelets...)
...gouged to the root
Of our blackened-out bodies
splayed like a black womb-flower.
4
The song, sung to the bone.
And the song is feeling and flowing.
Stillness. Breathing. Seeding
(And how are we, moment to moment
changing
So the place is
as we become it)
To see how the placing
Of every stone and branch
Makes the stream's song
Stone by stone, as they
Angle and dip, brown-stained
And the stub of a beech
A sapling sprouts from
That the water swathes around,
To where it splays into the loch
(And the tent's skin, in the breeze
Imprinted with tree-shadows...
And in the van's side mirror
Branches, and a patch of blue sky cloud
As strong, or stronger, than my own face)
By grace. By transparency.
By a light stronger and gentler than anything.
And if you walk that way, you will be kind.
The sun, shining on the grass...
- and the dead skins of the kippers
turning in the wave
floating in the wave
are bronze treasures
in gold light -
The loch inside us, like them.
And gone beyond words, we wonder.
If this is the beginning or the ending
or neither
- turning in the wave,
turning in the deep
of the unseen peat-black water...
The passing fields,
Their wound still-green mats of hay
The knife of rain-silver light,
Thrilling the clouds and the mountain-rim
Slowing along beside it
Slowing to stone at Kilmartin -
Thirteenth, fourteenth century gravestones
With their swords and tracery, armoured
Knights, faceless in vizored grey
Ghost-grey - each, facing both ways -
Armed at the front, with chain-mail and spears
And facing behind them, into the unknown:
Warrior, what will come out of the mist to you?
Will your claymore and spear be of any use?
Is it a spear you need now, or a staff?
A vizor, or a cowl?
(Your soul, grey, armourless, waiting)
And the great cross inside the kirk
With Christ, skinny, skeletal, crucified
His arm fragmenting into metal stanchions -
Crowned above with a distant angel
And on the other side of grey, grey
He is Risen, risen through the centuries -
Now comes the resurrection... the missing piece
Unearthed, under a raised pick -
Become annunciation, where the fracture
Cuts across His face and open eyes
Shining, worn, almost invisible in the flash-light:
Master, born out of the ground
Mother, Madonna, and the earth like a sun
Earth, risen - earth, a sun -
In her belly and in her rising
come
Master of death, mother of death, come
- risen, like the necklace
bead by bead
out of the cist,
under the elm tree
threaded, hole by hole, with tiny rootlets -
(around your neck and your warm bare breasts)
And the dead in their sleep of stone,
Under a lip of stone, at Dunchraigaig -
Bent, to their sideways gaze -
Charred bones, gone into the labyrinth
Deeper and deeper into matter
Down the years, down the centuries
Down this Via Dolorosa of tears
- to the depths of stone
in our eyes
blue clay
blue clay sea-dreaming depth,
in the mystery of bone and sea-flesh
that the farmer forgets, that the field forgets
cordoning their standing...
and we remember
stilled to this stone, blood-dark
breathing the breath of its grey breath
(two sparrowhawks hovering)
Awake in the Land of Pain
The gouged furrows in the hillside
As if combed with steel -
(For peat, or planting)
The earth dry, bared in the green
Lashmarks on the land's flogged back
And in us, as the road wound
Through the wound of it, acre after acre
And we sit here, we sit naked here
There is no escape, only the silence
And the pain, before the pain can shine
The soul's way, out -
Love, in your eyes
(And the sun-stone they sharpened their blades on,
Stands like a man in prayer)
- before the green echoes back
open, towards the sea
bracken, couch grass
blending, unbroken
light-shaded
with outcrops of heather-mauve
like something already healed -
Coming down, through the forest
Past an upturned stump with its roots bared
To the sky: pines, pines, pines...
Pausing to find where we are,
On the other shore - standing
On a forestry bench, to look down
Bird-wise at our size,
The way the sky might look at us
More closely than we imagine...
Among the miles of forest and inlets;
Down to the Ford... and back to drying blankets
The tent glowing with two lit candles
The rain whispering down among the leaves,
The loch in the grey-silver light, as it always was,
And the flitting, curving, diving
- black blur of a bat
hurtling fast aside
and circling -
And the water, patient to its reflection
Spelling: wait
And deeper than anything we can say now
the place is our language and our healing
5
To let it be now,
Given as it is -
Sinking like the rain
Slowly to its depth.
When there is space between us -
We can be essential, giving
And given to, like the rain to the ground,
And the sun to the grass, to the sheep.
We are figures in a landscape, if we know our place.
And the letting be can breathe as it can smile,
Thanks to a passing driver -
Waving, to a fellow walker.
We are the key and the core
And there is more in woods and stones
Than in books -
This is the book I am reading.
The loch, its spine.
The ground, its pages.
And for you, it's all colour
You confessed to despising -
Black and white, all form and tone
Transformed, come through, come alive
To what matters: not the photograph,
Become its own transparency -
The elements, its developer
The night, its darkroom: the print
Of it, unique to each pair
of seeing eyes
- to find words for that.
'To see your birth in everything'
(And you handed him an egg).
To be a priest of earth.
Across the narrow causeway
Of half-sunken stones -
Where the temple stands, bruised by fire;
The trees, abused - their hollows, burnt -
To dare to be your heart. And be it.
To make this cross out of branches and stones.
To speak the words. To be oak.
Heal us.
And what binds us is what frees us -
The knot of the cross,
the heart bound to earth
Bound?
to love.
Free, as the loch
Free of the blood that bled
Free of the hunters -
Free of the jolly paddle-steamers
Freed from time, in time, through time
The castle where they imprisoned the child
The Castle of the Red-Haired Girl,
The ford where the warring brothers both died,
(The pass with its staked line of heads)
The banner, snaking up into the air!
- falling
plunging down among the trees
up the
slippery mud-path, holding the wire -
(the roar, returning
pure, cleansing
like thunder)
The herd, lowing, noses raised, along the road
Fincharn, fired, and buried in ivy
(like a folly, across the bull-field now)
And if you come here, in the rain
As we came off the map by the edge of the road
To a wet tractor-track leading up out of sight,
Slow walking, steep, rutted among stones -
The old path, long unused, untrodden
If you come this way, in the pine-scented air
In the quietening, gathering, waiting air
You may feel something coming to meet you
Stirring under your feet and clearing in your eyes
Though there is nothing you can see
But pines and bracken; until you glimpse - walls,
Fringing the green - low, bleached, lichen covered
Walls, and a skirting wall where the gate once was:
And we paused there, without knowing why -
Wading through the bracken, to it -
To the left portal with its Devil's Handprint
To gaze at it, roofless, among fallen masonry -
Overgrown, now given back: given to bracken, to ragwort
Flowering, thistle-heads, bees - and a butterfly
Given in the arms of a dead tree, leaning
By the far wall, with one branch of it alive -
Given to light, and intact - the font intact
Aumbries and piscina, and our steps
Unsure of what we were about to tread on;
Stone, or earth, or gravestones - carved, abandoned
Asleep in the rain and the light, among the flowers
By the sanctuary of the walls, where no one comes,
And there is no more death and no more time -
And what is dead, and alive, are one
And by this font, I want to be baptized:
To be born here, married here, die here, feast here -
This is the place of the heart's wild baptism,
The heart's own, its own way
Baptism, and faith in the broken -
Faith, broken the heart's way to resurrection
There is no service here, no solemn congregation -
Baptism, among the bees and the trees for witness
Baptism, and you touch me on my forehead
Baptism of touch, with all that matters most
Baptism, and he bows and cannot speak
Baptism of fire and of blood - and it's all beauty,
All of it, every fallen stone - none of it, wasted -
None of it, ever
If you come here, come in your heart: only that
- in the rain,
turning away
to find you, now -
In the rain, out on the road to Dalmally
Past the old green road where he drove his sheep
- a thin green line
among the black dots...
gone back
to ground - back into the dream -
Rob Roy, and you, Landless MacGregor -
Hounded by Grey Campbell and his Black Son
From Kilchurn to Glenstrae, into a ghost; and now?
Where the site is unmarked, and the name a river
By a farm gate and a cattle grid -
Where the road becomes sharp uneven fragments
We come, as slowly, to it: there
Under the mountain with its head of cloud,
Through staves of downward telephone wire,
Its scattered stones, covered like a scree slope;
The foundation, stretched into a mound
You have to guess at -
But it stands in the air, where it was
It stands where air is stronger than stone
Grey, within grey, where the pass goes upwards
Grey as the rain-sky echoes its aura
Of in-seen, magnetic space
And this stone, smaller than a pebble
With its bloodstain like a smear of quartz
Is red, is fresh - for you
remembering
The Arrow of Glenlyon, fallen -
The house of love, beaten down
And Kilchurn, beside it, like a mere decoration
Smiling, cracked - empty. Justice.
The way the earth does it.
And the heart is a single swallow
Dipping and curving over the lake shore
Through the dusk
in its arc -
its black-fork
-tailed, sweeping flight
(catching midges!)
He flies alone and untrammelled
as if for us
He flies, unheeding
faster than you can name him
Soft, to his word -
and, one by one... seven come join him
And then those ducks, swimming along
Come round from the island -
With one trailing behind,
All at once, comically, dipping down;
Under the water, for what seemed
Far too long
surfacing,
together, fifty yards on
Under the one sky
that is cloud and loch
Cloud-loch, loch-space: containing us,
To see things, seeing them as they are
At the speed they are
and of one, walking
(And to see why
- or how -
The lightness is everything).
6
Before you wake -
Though the wind has blown all night,
Before you wake
I would bring you this peace.
Rest now. Be with your dreams.
For the road is long,
But I know the way.
I go alone now. I have come.
To this place of the heart again:
And the peace is everywhere, you can hear it now
The peace is the bees, the peace is the flowers,
The peace is the flies, the peace is the stones,
And the peace is the man, sitting there
With the stream flow, below, beneath the conifers
And what was rain... become clear, become sun
And the rain's whisper, a slow sea in the trees
Breathing now, as a fly lands on the page
And rubs its antennae, as if trusting him
The way the bee trusts the thistle it nestles in,
And the tiny snail the wall it crawls across,
And the toadstools the moss stump they grow on
And the far wall leans in the arms of the tree,
The green world is given sanctuary
As I would give it to you -
And the font is a well of soul,
A deep black well of soul,
Bubbling up from inside like a fountain
To bathe your face in;
And as you kneel at last, and see it
A voice like your own, but not your own
Can tell you
Be cleansed in your heart.
And how long you were there, you don't know.
It seems you have been out of time.
It seems, it all seems, until you come to
And your foot half-trips over a heart-shaped stone:
I will carry it to you
Where you sit,
Lying as you woke in your cocoon
And you did not know who spoke to you,
But words came, and you wrote them, all of them
And the whole thing flowed from end to end
She said: the way to the Goddess is steep
And many have gone down without returning,
But you shall
And the world is full of the prophesies of doom,
It is time for the prophecy of joy
Speak it -
And know that the wounds within you
Are as nothing compared with your inheritance,
Child
The way of the crucifixion is gone
The time of joy and manifesting is at hand
And the way of the earth is the way of God:
You will be heard in all places, by what you do;
Let your soul carry you,
Let the spirit empty into you
And she ran, she ran out of the castle -
Holding a baby under her left arm
And a knife in her hand,
Stabbing at the invading men -
Black hair, and cloak - her eyes blazing
And the stone cleft she went under then,
Holding the child as she looked at her eyes
So still and blue in their calm
And her man gone, only the cave remaining
The cave in the hill of her conceiving
Annie MacGregor, your sister and friend
The great silent vista of loch water
Shimmering behind you, and behind the tent -
- the silent stretches of conifers
and even more silent
the mountains, beyond -
As you sit on an upturned bowl,
In your kerchief; hardly believing,
Even, disbelieving
How it comes so out of time and place
To find us so unexpectedly in place
And what opens in us to meet it we have never seen
Praise be the fruit and the lion,
Praise be in the days of fire to come
Praise be the one who sings this song
It is not courage or valour, but tenderness
It is not loud - it is not arrogance
And it is stronger than steel: it is the rose
Marrow of wisdom, born from the rock
And if you want to hit the rock with the stone,
Don't try to throw the stone at the rock
But let the stone
hit the rock
And he said, now I have come here at last, again
Think of all the ways the heart needs cleansing,
For this new birth to take place -
It is not enough that the mind is made light,
The heart too must be made light
All mind-work now needs to be heart-work:
And this is the new education of earth.
For too long spirit has been understood in mind,
And this is why He came to earth
To show you the way of the heart
To show you that the way of heaven is earth's.
When you understand this, your lives will be released
In ways almost inconceivable to you now.
This wild place speaks it -
Fallen stones and rising ground -
And the font where heaven and earth meet, and in you.
And this is the task of speech:
To be of the heart, to be of your whole body,
That the heart alone can hold and contain
Every level within you - become mind in heart,
And heart in mind, though you have no word for it
No word for what the mind is to become.
And this is the place of fire -
To be brought into the heart and its cleansing,
And the meaning of birth and the heart are the same:
The heart is incarnation. It never forgets.
What it has lived, it always remembers... rose.
The soul-mind comes closest.
So in this place of prayer and peace,
Let your prayers be for the heart of the people,
For the heart beyond all barriers and barricades,
And the fear of the mind and its defences
Pray that the walls may fall as they are falling,
Now the wind is blowing - and remember
That the heart's way is resurrection:
To re-connect means the same.
Now go on your way and be glad,
And know that to be a pilgrim is to walk
in the heart
- for the heart.
This place is your beginning.
This place is our beginning and our ending.
Kilneuair, let no harm come to you:
Be sacred, be wild, be free.
Peace, and I would bring this to you:
Even this fragment of stone
And now it's time to go.
Buffeted in the night -
The tent flap shaken open, twice
(the elastic guys worn and gone)
Crouching on the sodden groundsheet,
And where the milk spilt - havoc.
The borderland is no place
to put roots down in.
The van packed, and the last of us
An oval patch of grass and flattened mud
Like a womb, or a mouth.
We leave no trace to the rain and the wind,
And the loch is quiet, the loch is hidden.
The road opens like a wet black ribbon,
On the edge of our unknown returning.
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