Witch Work
The witch was as old as the mulberry tree
She lived in the house of a hundred clocks
She sold storms and sorrows and calmed the sea And she kept her life in a box.
The tree was the oldest that I’d ever seen
Its trunk flowed like liquid. It dripped with age.
But every September its fruit stained the green As scarlet as harlots, as red as my rage.
The clocks whispered time which they caught in their gears They crept and they chattered, they chimed and they chewed.
She fed them on minutes. The old ones ate years.
She feared and she loved them, her wild clocky brood.
She sold me a storm when my anger was strong
And my hate filled the world with volcanoes and laughter I watched as the lightnings and wind sang their song And my madness was swallowed by what happened after.
She sold me three sorrows all wrapped in a cloth.
The first one I gave to my enemy’s child.
The second my woman made into a broth.
The third waits unused, for we reconciled.
She sold calm seas to the mariners’ wives
Bound the winds with silk cords so the storms could be tied there, The women at home lived much happier lives
Till their husbands returned, and their patience be tried there.
The witch hid her life in a box made of dirt, As big as a fist and as dark as a heart
There was nothing but time there and silence and hurt While the witch watched the waves with her pain and her art.
(But he never came back. He never came back . . .)
The witch was as old as the mulberry tree
She lived in the house of a hundred clocks
She sold storms and sorrows and calmed the sea And she kept her life in a box.
In Relig Odhráin
When Saint Columba landed on the island of Iona
His friend Oran landed with him
Though some say Saint Oran waited
In the shadows of the island, waiting for the saint to land there, I believe they came together, came from Ireland, were like brothers Were the blond and brave Columba and the dark man they called Oran.
He was odrán, like the otter, was the other. There were others And they landed on Iona and they said, We’ll build a chapel.
It’s what saints did when they landed. (Oran: priest of sun or fire Or from odhra, meaning dark-haired.) But their chapel kept on crumbling.
And Columba took the answer from a dream or revelation, That his building needed Oran, needed death in the foundations.
Others claim it was doctrinal, and Saints Oran and Columba Were debating, as the Irish love debating, about Heaven, Since the truth is long-forgotten we are left with just their actions (By their actions shall ye know them): Saint Columba buried Oran Still alive, with earth about him, buried deep, with earth upon him.
Three days later they returned there, stocky monks with spades and mattocks And they dug down to Saint Oran, so Columba could embrace him Touch his face and say his farewells. Three days dead. They brushed the mud off When Saint Oran’s eyes blinked open. Oran grinned at Saint Columba.
He had died but now was risen, and he said the words the dead know, In a voice like wind and water.
He said, Heaven is not waiting for the good and pure and gentle There’s no punishment eternal, there’s no Hell for the ungodly Nor is God as you imagine— Saint Columba shouted ‘Quiet!’
And to save the monks from error shovelled mud onto Saint Oran.
So they buried him forever. And they called the place Saint Oran’s.
In its churchyard kings of Scotland, kings of Norway, all were buried On the island of Iona.
Some folk claim it was a druid priest of sunlight that was buried In the earth of good Iona just to hold the church foundations, But for me that’s much too simple, and it libels Saint Columba (Who cried ‘Earth! Throw earth on Oran, stop his mouth with mud this moment, Lest he bring us to perdition!’). They imagine it a murder As one saint entombed another underneath that holy chapel.
While Saint Oran’s name continues,
Martyred heretic, his bones still hold the chapel stones together, And we join them, kings and princes, in his graveyard, in his chapel, For it’s Oran’s name they carry. He’s embraced in his damnation By the simple words he uttered. There’s no Hell to spite the sinners.
There’s no Heaven for the blessed. God is not what you imagine.
And perhaps he kept on preaching, for he’d died and he had risen, Until silenced, crushed or muffled by the soil of Iona.
Saint Columba, he was buried on the island of Iona
Decades later. But they disinterred his body and they took it To Downpatrick, where it’s buried with Saint Patrick and Saint Brigid.
So the only saint is Oran on the island of Iona.
Don’t go digging in that graveyard for the kings of old, the mighty, Or archbishops and their riches. They are guarded by Saint Oran Who will rise up from the gravedirt like the darkness, like an otter, For he sees the sun no longer. He will touch you,
He will taste you, he will leave his words inside you.
(God is not what you imagine. Nor is Hell and nor is Heaven.)
Then you’ll leave him and his graveyard, and forget the shadow’s terror, As you rub your neck, remember only this: he died to save us.
And that Saint Columba killed him on the island of Iona.