Classic Poem

Run, run to the sailmaker —
While I pluck the torn white hedges
Of sea to crown my head —
And tell him to bind hard the canvas
For the waves are unhorsed to-night;
I cracked a thought between my nails
That they will light a candle
When I swim from the loud grass
To the holy house of Kieran.

Storm is masted in the oakwood
Now and the fire of the hags
Blown out by the tide; in wet smoke
Mannanaun splashes by with a bagful
Of music to wager for the food
In a house where the women mull
Ale; workmen dream of their furnace
And the male jewels that are alive:
But I hear the hounds of the black queen race
As I nest in the drenching ivy.

The rain is drowning in Glenveigh
Where once the vats of brightness poured
Until the wet green branches hid
The black ridge of the boar:
Garlic was good there and the pignut;
Upon the clean tops of the wells
A tender crop was rooted
But the wild-eyed man of the water
Was feathered like a hawk to the foot.

I hurried at evening
From the glen of birches
When longer shadows
Were cropping
Their way: on a sudden,
Darkness was nearer,
Hazels had ripened,
I heard the rain drop.

Far down a dark hollow
Of sloe-trees, a bird
Cried and black swine
Ran under the fences
Of rain for a tall man
Followed, his one eye
Redder than grey turf
When it is stirred:
Far down the hollow,
Sloe-bushes ran.

A black drove of boulders
Was crossing the ford:
O to what household,
Swineherd, Red Swineherd,
Do you hurry unbidden
That men may carouse?
Breathe on their eye-lids
And bound to the rafters
May three naked women drip
Blood; in their hearing
Strange laughter and rapine

Of phantoms that tumble
From nothing, till fear
Empty the bladder,
Swineherd, Red Swineherd,
And shadows madden
The heart like a drum.

I hurried to the paddock
While stablemen were brawling
And under the bellies
Of horses I crawled:
Dark, dark was the harness,
(The wheelwright said I was mad)
But I flung back the lock
And I loosed forty hoofs to
The storm in the grass.

A juggler cried. Light
Rushed from doors and men singing:
" O she has been wedded
To-night, the true wife of Sweeny,
Of Sweeny the King!"
I saw a pale women
Half clad for the new bed:
I fought them with talons, I ran
On the oak-wood — O Horsemen,
Dark Horsemen, I tell ye
That Sweeny is dead!

Stark in the rushlight
Of the lake-water,
I heard the heads talking
As they dripped on the stake:
Who runs with the grey moon
When ravens are asleep?
It is Sweeny, Little Sweeny
Looking for his mind.
When dogheads were barking in the wood,
I broke the horns of a goathead
For I heard them on the water
Call: Sweeny, Little Sweeny
Is looking for his mind.
But Robbers, dark Robbers, I tell ye
That Sweeny is dead!

If I sleep now, the hag
Of the haggard, will steal
My feathers though I drowned her
In the dark pool of Achill
That has no sound.

When tides were baying
The moon, in a glen
Of pools, I fed on
Grey cowdung: a hundred
Men hauling a slab
Upon the great dolmen
Of Sweeny the King,
From the shovels and barrow,

Fled. Nailing, I dug up
The gold cup and collar
And hid them in rain.
But how can mind hurry
As reeds without feet,
And why is there pain in
A mind that is dead?

I have heard the little music
Of Midna, I have seen
Tara in flame and a blooded moon
Behind the Ridge of Judgment . . .
But how can they find my name
Though they are crying like gulls
That search for the sea?
Nine years I hurried from mankind
And yet, O Christ, if I could sail
To the Island of the Culdees,
I would sleep, sleep awhile
By the blessing of the holy Kieran.