Sweeney Astray (3 page)

21

              

To-night the snow is cold.

I was at the end of my tether

but hunger and bother

are endless.

 

 

 

Look at me, broken

and down-at-heel,

Sweeney from Rasharkin.

Look at me now

 

 

 

always shifting,

making fresh pads,

and always at night.

At times I am afraid.

 

 

 

In the grip of dread

I would launch and sail

beyond the known seas.

I am the madman of Glen Bolcain,

 

 

 

wind-scourged, stripped

like a winter tree

clad in black frost

and frozen snow.

 

 

 

Hard grey branches

have torn my hands,

the skin of my feet

is in strips from briars

 

 

 

and the pain of frostbite

has put me astray,

from Slemish to Slieve Gullion,

from Slieve Gullion to Cooley.

 

 

 

I went raving with grief

on the top of Slieve Patrick,

from Glen Bolcain to Islay,

from Kintyre to Mourne.

 

 

 

I waken at dawn

with a fasting spittle:

then at Cloonkill, a bunch of cress,

at Kilnoo, the cuckoo flower.

 

 

 

I wish I lived safe

and sound in Rasharkin

and not here, heartbroken,

in my bare pelt, at bay in the snow.

 

23

              

I perched for rest and imagined

cuckoos calling across water,

the Bann cuckoo, calling sweeter

than church bells that whinge and grind.

 

 

 

Friday is the wrong day, woman,

for you to give birth to a son,

the day when Mad Sweeney fasts

for love of God, in penitence.

 

 

 

Do not just discount me. Listen.

At Moira my tribe was beaten,

beetled, heckled, hammered down,

like flax being scutched by these women.

 

 

 

From the cliff of Lough Diolar

to Derry Colmcille

I saw the great swans, heard their calls

sweetly rebuking wars and battles.

 

 

 

From lonely cliff-tops, the stag

bells and makes the whole glen shake

and re-echo. I am ravished.

Unearthly sweetness shakes my breast.

 

 

 

O Christ, the loving and the sinless,

hear my prayer, attend, O Christ,

and let nothing separate us.

Blend me forever in your sweetness.

 

25

              

I pined the whole night

in Derville's chapel

for Dal-Arie

and peopled the dark

 

 

 

with a thousand ghosts.

My dream restored me:

the army lay at Drumfree

and I came into my kingdom,

 

 

 

camped with my troop,

back with Faolchu and Congal

for our night at Drumduff.

Taunters, will-o'-the-wisps,

 

 

 

who saw me brought to heel

at Moira, you crowd my head

and fade away

and leave me to the night.

 

27

              

I dare not sink down, snore and fall

fast asleep like the man at the wall,

I who never batted an eye

during the seven years since Moira.

 

 

 

God of Heaven! Why did I go

battling out that famous Tuesday

to end up changed into Mad Sweeney,

roosting alone up in the ivy?

 

 

 

From the well of Drum Cirb, watercress

supplies my bite and sup at terce;

its juices that have greened my chin

are Sweeney's markings and birth-stain.

 

 

 

And the manhunt is an expiation.

Mad Sweeney is on the run

and sleeps curled beneath a rag

under the shadow of Slieve League—

 

 

 

long cut off from the happy time

when I lived apart, an honoured name;

long exiled from those rushy hillsides,

far from my home among the reeds.

 

 

 

I give thanks to the King above

whose harshness only proves His love

which was outraged by my offence

and shaped my new shape for my sins—

 

 

 

a shape that flutters from the ivy

to shiver under a winter sky,

to go drenched in teems of rain

and crouch under thunderstorms.

 

 

 

Though I still have life, haunting deep

in the yew glen, climbing mountain slopes,

I would swop places with Congal Claon,

stretched on his back among the slain.

 

 

 

My life is steady lamentation

that the roof over my head has gone,

that I go in rags, starved and mad,

brought to this by the power of God.

 

 

 

It was sheer madness to imagine

any life outside Glen Bolcain—

Glen Bolcain, my pillow and heart's ease,

my Eden thick with apple trees.

 

 

 

What does he know, the man at the wall,

how Sweeney survived his downfall?

Going stooped through the long grass.

A sup of water. Watercress.

 

 

 

Summering where herons stalk.

Wintering out among wolf-packs.

Plumed in twigs that green and fall.

What does he know, the man at the wall?

 

 

 

I who once camped among mad friends

in Bolcain, that happy glen of winds

and wind-borne echoes, live miserable

beyond the dreams of the man at the wall.

 

29

              

Lynchseachan, you are a bother.

Leave me alone, give me peace.

Is it not enough that Ronan doomed me

to live furtive and suspicious?

 

 

 

When I let fly that fatal spear

at Ronan in the heat of battle

it split his holy breastplate open,

it dented his cleric's bell.

 

 

 

When I nailed him in the battle

with one magnificent spear-cast,

—Let the freedom of the birds be yours!

was how he prayed, Ronan the priest.

 

 

 

And I rebounded off his prayer

up, up and up, flying through air

lighter and nimbler and far higher

than I would ever fly again.

 

 

 

To see me in my morning glory

that Tuesday morning, turn time back;

still in my mind's eye I march out

in rank, in step with my own folk.

 

 

 

But now with my own eyes I see

something more miraculous even:

under the hood of a woman's shawl,

the shifty eyes of Lynchseachan.

 

32

 

Sweeney:

 

Restless as wingbeats

of memory, I hover

above you, and your bed

still warm from your lover.

 

 

 

 

 

Remember when you played

the promise-game with me?

Sun and moon would have died

if ever you lost your Sweeney!

 

 

 

 

 

But you have broken trust,

unmade it like a bed—

not mine in the dawn frost

but yours, that he invaded.

 

 

 

Eorann:

 

Welcome here, my crazy dote,

my first and last and favourite!

I am easy now, and yet I wasted

at the cruel news of your being bested.

 

 

 

Sweeney:

 

There's more welcome for the prince

who preens for you and struts

to those amorous banquets

where Sweeney feasted once.

 

 

 

Eorann:

 

All the same, I would prefer

a hollow tree and Sweeney bare—

that sweetest game we used to play—

to banqueting with him to-day.

 

 

 

 

 

I tell you, Sweeney, if I were given

the pick of all in earth and Ireland

I'd rather go with you, live sinless

and sup on water and watercress.

 

 

 

Sweeney:

 

But cold and hard as stone

lies Sweeney's path

through the beds of Lisardowlin.

There I go to earth

 

 

 

 

 

in panic, starved and bare,

a rickle of skin and bones.

I am yours no longer.

And you are another man's.

 

 

 

Eorann:

 

My poor tormented lunatic!

When I see you like this it makes me sick

your cheek gone pale, your skin all scars,

ripped and scored by thorns and briars.

 

 

 

Sweeney:

 

And yet I hold no grudge,

my gentle one.

Christ ordained my bondage

and exhaustion.

 

 

 

Eorann:

 

I wish we could fly away together,

be rolling stones, birds of a feather:

I'd swoop to pleasure you in flight

and huddle close on the roost at night.

 

 

 

Sweeney:

 

I have gone north and south.

One night I was in the Mournes.

I have wandered as far as the Bann mouth

and Kilsooney.