Sweeney Astray (6 page)

47

 

Sweeney:

 

What happened, Man of the Wood,

to make you whinge

and hobble like this? Why did

your mind unhinge?

 

 

 

Man:

 

Caution and fear of the king

have silenced me.

I made a tombstone of my tongue

to keep my story.

 

 

 

 

 

I am the Man of the Wood.

I was famous

in battles once. Now I hide

among bushes.

 

 

 

Sweeney:

 

I come from the Bush myself.

I am Sweeney,

son of Colman. Like yourself,

outcast, shifty.

 

 

                 

Whoever of us is the first to hear

the cry of a heron from a lough's blue-green waters

or the clear note of a cormorant

or the flight of a woodcock off a branch

or the wheep of a plover disturbed in its sleep

or the crackle of feet in withered branches,

or whoever of us is the first to see

the shadow of a bird above the wood,

let him warn the other.

Let us move always

with the breadth of two trees between us.

And if one of us hears any of these things

or anything like them,

let both of us scatter immediately.

 

52

              

Now my bare skin feels

night falling on Moylinny,

the plain where Congal lived.

Now in my memory

 

 

 

I see Congal and me

riding across the plain

deep in conversation,

headed for Drum Lurgan.

 

 

 

I am saying to the king:

—The services I give

are not being rewarded.

And I threaten I will leave.

 

 

 

What does the king do then?

He gives me in their hundreds

horses, bridles, swords, foreign

captives, girl attendants.

 

 

 

And my great chestnut steed,

the best that grazed or galloped,

his cloth-of-gold tunic,

his girdle of silk plaits.

 

 

 

So what plain matches this plain?

Is it the plain of Meath

or the plain of Airgeadros

or Moyfevin with its crosses?

 

 

 

Moylurg or Moyfea,

the lovely plain of Connacht,

the Liffey banks, Bannside,

or the plain of Muirhevna?

 

 

 

I have seen all of them,

north, south, east, and west,

but never saw the equal

of this ground in Antrim.

 

54

              

Whoever stirs up enmity

should never have been born;

may every bitter man and woman

be barred at the gate of heaven.

 

 

 

If three conspire and combine

one will backbite or complain

as I complain, going torn

by briar and sharp blackthorn.

 

 

 

First, madwoman flees from man.

Then, something stranger even:

barefoot, in his bare skin,

man runs away from woman.

 

 

 

In November, wild ducks fly.

From those dark days until May

let us forage, nest and hide

in ivy in the brown wood

 

 

 

and hear behind birds' singing

water sounds in Glen Bolcain,

its fast streams, all hush and jabber,

its islands on forking rivers,

 

 

 

its hazel trees and holly bowers,

its acorns and leaves and briars,

its nuts, its sharp-tasting sloes,

its sweet, cool-fleshed berries:

 

 

 

and under trees, its hounds coursing,

its loud stags bellowing,

its waters' clear endless fall—

what enmity is possible?

 

56

              

Any man a woman falls for,

however handsome, should beware.

Mad Sweeney is the proof,

cast off by his first love.

 

 

 

And any trusting man must stay

on guard for their treachery

because betrayal like Eorann's

is second nature in a woman.

 

 

 

Gullible and open-handed,

straightforward, wide-eyed,

I gave steeds and herds away,

filled her pastures in a day.

 

 

 

In the thick of fighting men

I could more than hold my own:

when the battle cry was sounded

I handled thirty single-handed.

 

 

 

It was Congal's right to ask for

a warrior to champion Ulster:

—Who among you will take on

the fighter king of Ui Faolain?

 

 

 

Oilill was a berserk giant,

a shield and spear in either hand,

so overbearing in his stride

for a while our ranks were daunted.

 

 

 

But when I spoke at Congal's side

it was not to whinge or backslide:

—Though Oilill is their strongest bastion,

I will hold the line against him.

 

 

 

I left him shortened by a head

and left the torso, overjoyed,

and left five other princes dead

before I stopped to wipe my blade.

 

58

              

The Mournes are cold to-night,

my station is desolate:

no milk or honey in this land

of snowfields, gusting wind.

 

 

 

In a sharp-branched holly tree,

exhausted, nothing on me,

chilled to the bone, every night

I camp on the mountain summit.

 

 

 

Frost casts me like an effigy

unless I shift and break free

when gales from the plain of Leinster

fan me alive, a bleak ember

 

 

 

dreaming, when summer dies

round Hallowe'en and All-Hallows,

another move to my old ground—

the clear springs of Glen Bolcain.

 

 

 

Astray no more east or west,

blizzards whipping my bare face,

not shivering in some drifted den,

a starved, pinched, raving madman,

 

 

 

but sheltered in that lovely glen,

my winter harbour, my haven,

my refuge from the bare heath,

my royal fort, my king's rath.

 

 

 

All night there I glean and raid

and forage in the oak wood.

My hands feel out leaf and rind,

roots, windfalls on the ground,

 

 

 

they comb through matted watercress

and grope among the bog-berries,

brooklime, sorrel, damp moss,

wild garlic, raspberries,

 

 

 

apples, hazel-nuts, acorns,

haws of the sharp, jaggy hawthorn,

and blackberries, floating weed,

the whole store of the oak wood.

 

 

 

Keep me here, Christ, far away

from open ground and flat country.

Let me suffer the cold of glens.

I dread the cold space of plains.