among ourselves, salivating
the honeydew inoculum and spitting
when we talked, incubating the deformity
that falls to the soil, becomes the soil, the pathogen
our conditions were right for.
Pittenweem, place of the cave, the cell.
Pretty Pittenweem, its wynds to the harbour.
It was as though, once we’d killed her there
lights went up at last orders of a fucked-up session, and we read
on neighbours’ faces our own expressions.
Ugly, greedy, wasted.
We’d had plans for Nicolas Lawson
but called time.
Something did not want the best for us, and hid itself
in our confusion. Hidden, it lived
in everything. That we were superstitious, easily led,
afraid of the unfamiliar in familiar ways
could all be true. Still
to those who believe we knew no better
I’d say, we knew.
WHITE STRANGERS
under the yardlight
the yard an island
walking out of the dark
like wading ashore
I answered
when they knocked
you have to in this cold
and that Weiser lock
a ten-year-old could force
their truck died
in the field they said
phones too
where they were hunting
drinking
and couldn’t leave the rifles
as no doubt I would agree
I am alone here
why is that
blizzard a sea
breaking through the windbreak
two men with guns
what could I do
I let them in
ORIGIN STORY
Pregnant by rape, deception,
or in defiance, accounts vary,
Thaney was thrown from the 25th-floor balcony
of Traprain Law by her father, Loth,
a pride-based thinker
consumed by a tyrant’s bloody melancholy.
Maybe she loved him.
It doesn’t seem possible
but that’s never stopped anybody.
As happens in these stories, she survived,
offending the Bass Rock gannets
who thought they’d seen everything
and Loth, who, in his executive hatred
of surprises, set her adrift
in a coracle without oars,
said, Then let the firth’s dogs have her.
*
To make our own the righteous anger
that keeps some people alive
feels like doing something
so grief and fear don’t stir
under their blanket, don’t open their eyes.
So survival does not seem merely accidental
to the indecision when to lay down
the earthly burdens, the way a quality is accidental
to a substance —
No, not like that,
she may have thought,
drifting toward the rock that would be named for her,
clutching at its hair, the fish curious
though emotionally disinterested, as fish are.
They crowded these waters for centuries
in case something like this ever happened again.
Until recently. Not many fish now.
*
The extremities numb first,
her body closing the wings of its mansion
to warm a small inner apartment —
a stove, a bulb on a cord.
All night she clung to the hide
of the greenstone, until the tide took her, at dawn
when walls between worlds
Don’t stir, don’t open your eyes, not yet.
Thaney, astronaut
of an inhospitable element
like that between units of time
which, overflowing, extinguishes time.
Please can I lay them down.
How long was she out there. An era, floating
in a cortege of unhelpful sea life,
in the imagination of a culture
with a fetish for suffering,
condensed to a bright concentrate
like the picture on an old tube television,
stove inside her, bulb on a cord.
Were she extinguished, it would glow
a little while, not long.
*
Accounts, though varied, say she cried,
prayed, maybe she sang, no one knows
but the double tides at Culross
that brought her ashore. A quirk
of local topography, not the miracle
ascribed to her child, Kentigern,
born on the north beach and discovered by —
with their usual flair
for being at the right place
at the right time —
shepherds, who fetched the monk
Servanus, from whom Kentigern acquired
the pet name Mungo — or, Dear One —
and a leadership role in the militia of Christ.
*
Thaney, burning from her passage
through the semblance
acquired the density of something
about to be lost.
KENTIGERN AND THE ROBIN
A fine day to be cruel. Sunny, with a breeze
to carry their laughter’s smoke
across the cloister.
The rot budding at the core of their energies they’d diagnosed
as Servanus’ fondness for Kentigern,
who’d washed up on the beach at Culross
like trash in the barrel of his mother
to steal the affection entitled them.
Hatred is a plotting emotion
and gleefully inclusive. Also irksome
the more they discussed it, Servanus’ love
for his pet robin, a stupid thing so trusting
it would eat from his hand.
Killing it was a way to toss
their disappointment off an overpass
without dying. To give up, using another’s life.
To blame the bastard killed three birds in one.
A person can’t just do nothing.
Into the broken little body Kentigern poured a scant ounce of his spirit.
Into the vacuum left behind rolled a pebble from the afterworld.
I thought as much, Servanus said
and summoned the novitiates: See, this boy is above you.
To him, the standard does not apply.
Through this address, the robin sang.
Through prayers, chores, classes, meals,
through late mass and into the night
it sang to young men with their heads in their hands,
to the knowledge of what they’d done with their ability to do so.
Unwound its voice like a rope into the place it had been
where all communication is one-way.
But a part of it wouldn’t be called back.
The robin never flew again,
bound as it was to Kentigern by its debt.
TO THE EXTENT A TRADITION CAN BE SAID TO BE DEVELOPED; IT IS MORE ACCURATE TO SAY IT CAN BE CLOTHED IN DIFFERENT FORMS
As three persons in one, I come to this life:
the one in it, the one beside it, the one far away.
As one also are my three enemies, and the effects
of meds taken at mealtimes.
A stable mind wants vigil, prayer, and labour.
A three-legged table fits nicely in its corner
like a soul in the cleanliness of a realm
whose mathematics cannot lead to error.
Spinoza so loved the triangle
he wished to appreciate God that way.
Pythagoras distru
sted nature. Its even numbers
were to him, in their easy divisibility, female;
though the four spiritual violences, four heavens, four hells
are, like a six-figure salary,
more than seems, strictly speaking, necessary.
And the three waters to which we may be lost
that flow from injury, exhaustion, sorrow.
Five rows of folding chairs were the first thing police saw
in the starved toddler’s home, and in the home
the seven symbols, and the five kinds of harm.
In the highest place, without society, of no definite colour, beak in the air
sweetly singing lives the solitary bird.
The three laws of inner recollection —
do not be lukewarm in this work.
Rubbing at your imperfections as at old stains.
The fifteen strengths are outnumbered by what must be learned,
even more so by what must be avoided, a list too long to get into here
but one Socrates may have pondered as for twenty-four hours
he stood motionless in the snow, no harm done
to body or mind,
composed, altered, erotic, detached —
a story told also about St. Columba
who, nicknamed St. Colm by the lowland Scots
was known to the English as St. Qualm, meaning
torment, violent death, destruction, plague.
Cassian’s six ranks of angels conform to Columba’s,
which Pope Gregory, the Great Administrator, improved upon, adding three.
In Bill Wilson’s Big Book, twelve steps conquer addiction.
There are twelve rungs on the Desert Fathers’ ladder to perfection.
All you have to do to climb the last one is to die.
AN UNEXPECTED ENCOUNTER WITH HE WHO HAS BEEN LEFT ALONE TO HIS PERILS
Coming across a thing like this it isn’t right
A pile of cast-offs off-cuts mistints
roll-ends I’m not sure
to whom but he is an insult No
I know you didn’t say anything
and anyway it’s no crime to resemble discarded inventory
not a crime to regard others
with what appears to be only basic species recognition
his narrowed eyes and laid-back ears
the unnerving impression he stares at a situation behind us
becoming more and more likely
You’re not one to judge No
Nor am I of course but clearly
he does not have both oars in the water does not try
to spare the soft parts of his footsoles
like the rest of us When he was a child
did a moth fly into his ear did he rest too long on a stone
and catch a cold in his head It’s unnatural
or overly natural What can one do with someone
from whom nothing can be taken
He’s done it to himself hasn’t he
A RETREAT
My friend A. owns a model of wireless optimism.
Has to recharge sometimes, but otherwise it’s always with her.
I’d concluded I don’t know how to love without hating.
A. said I needed a break from meaning’s narrative, summary aspects,
should spend time with the natural phenomena no speculation can penetrate.
She said to surrender an idea will feel like a new idea.
I took a sleeping bag to a sheltered place, and set out my paraphernalia.
After dark, the sea a television in another room, only the audio reached me.
A sound like traffic. Or wind and rain.
Vague, like the fog in my clothes.
In fact, details of the world at large seemed radically redacted
and a person forced to extrapolate from context.
It’s said we must learn to live with our shame, but some people can escape it.
They leave it with someone else, to whom it then belongs.
When I woke, my throat was raw, as if I’d shouted all night, or sung.
Which I might have done, I don’t remember, I was so high.
SONG
The cliff face, open and soft // vulnerable, so near the Coastal Path // undermined
by the sea and the noise of the sea // backs away slowly, meets no eye //
Waters of the firth like dogs at a fence // and, behind them, May Island //
keeping to itself the authoritative word // scans the shore without turning its head //
III
SONG
In the blood month, the dormancies // in its feelings for us, the land cools //
and conversation runs toward the fee // Who once was a friend, we must guard against //
Thing creates thing beyond our compass // They confide in each other, but not in me //
Between silence and language omens proliferate // A queue of seeds in the ground //
A LESSON
The tide rises, a crowd returning from a stadium,
abstract sound of innumerable specifics
reentering the shoreline’s boroughs. Wheels clatter
on the rocks of your driveway, headlamps light the wall.
A door opens in the place in you joy leaps to.
There’s puttering in the kitchen. Close your eyes.
What might happen this cycle has happened, and a promise kept —
the nightmare rocks and fingery weed-beds banished —
though something more important kicking off elsewhere
already has the water’s attention. Yet again it prepares to withdraw
even its neglect. Tidal pools are exposed,
their smell of mortal exchanges.
Nothing exists in darkness that doesn’t in the light.
Once, this comforted you.
THE INTERCESSORS
At our disposal are the tools, the DIY project kit.
The project is ourselves. He doesn’t talk lack, doesn’t
think lack, He thinks like a millionaire, why shouldn’t we?
It’s our spiritual heritage to secure our prosperity.
The Air1 Team meets daily to forward requests
to the Mighty Warriors Intercessors
Army. Terry from Paisley, who needs help with rent,
whose back pain arouses the neighbours’ judgment,
may well be annoyed appeals for prayers
that Tiger the cat be completely cured including cancer
get more traction in the virtual community.
The intensity of my dream made me unclean until evening.
Walking unsteadily on the ice at night outside the beer parlour
we might, like Bothelm of Hexham, fracture an arm;
but whereas by a splinter of Oswald’s cross
was he made whole, we may wake more broken, more wrong,
to another in a series of excuses: My office prevents me
from being with you at this time. Whenever I take an Aleve,
Terry, I’ll think of you. Anonymous thanks us for efforts
compelling her husband — who, though a literary scholar,
is careless with the grammar of eternal salvation —
to sever his link with the other woman,
casting that particular mountain into the sea, etc.
and vouches for the Prayer and Fasting CD, the free relic
with online purchase. One sends a barbarian
to fight a barbarian, in the Roman wisdom.
Spurned by Honorius in a letter suggesting they defend
themselves, in misery the British turned on each other, retreated
to the old hill forts. Trouble, distress, and sorrow ride before
a miracle. After a miracle, well, you know.
There’s limited fortune in the world, it seems,
or a distribution problem. But I go to sleep trusti
ng
my damaged face will be restored as a sign
of love. And extend also my intercessions for Helen,
alone since her Westie, old and full of days, “companion
of companions, friend of friends,” went the way of his fathers.
CRAIL SPRING
Surprised on returning to find the flat
flooded with light. Merciless,
evaporative, even when overcast, and
as the solstice neared, sanctimonious
in its imperative to productivity.
An expert with his pen light wondering
how you let it get this bad. That tone.
We were out all day in the clarity
of errors multiplied
into reality. Excess weight disclosed
by the indignity of seasonal clothes
and suspicious the promise
of those first fine days wouldn’t be
borne out. Children wept with exhaustion
in the playground past 11,
birds prodded awake at 3. So when the haar
sailed in, flags flying, party in a bag,
and took over the streets, we rejoiced
to see our choices diminish along
with the outlines of what they’d wrought.
Otherwise, not a fucking thing.
What could we do but make a weekend of it?
THE SHARING ECONOMY
This performance of “I Want My Fucking Money”
broadcast live from the street will conclude
when the last human being on earth
has perished.
The Freshly Renovated Bachelor Suite
has its ear to the ground, has the ear of the Paying Guest
who’s found a bed among the household’s automatic functions,
in its grotto of learning experiences (those decor objects from HomeSense’s
Blunt Force Trauma Collection), above which the Victorian Charmer charms
in its super-convenient location, and
the Superhosts walk overland.
A pilot light flickers like an awareness of self.
Chaos whispers through the fittings, patterns in the textiles
repeat, pipes sing, the weeping tile: between sound and silence
is music. In fact, the Paying Guest rises in the middle of the night
to turn off the radio where no radio exists, a storm imminent over the sea,
no, the lake — where we are will come clear in a minute —
and when the furnace knocks twice