Author: Duncan MacNae

Life flows on in endless song
Here sing its refrains 
Songs of freedom, songs of pain 
Old blues to make the sun come up again
Song of bird, dawn at last waking
Dirge in exile, long loneliness the heart finally breaking
Chants of work, somewhere even now, still such work
Soft lullaby to soothe a child, somewhere just now such song
Boisterous back beat ghetto rant
Anger and rebellion in chorus triumphant
Aimless whistling fairy tune
To sing the leaves the waves the moon
Meaningless pop song country ditty 
Oozing hollow from the pickup radio
Punk anthems where the air smells shitty
Just to let you know we’re not afraid of you
Cadence of soldiers marching, beats for the dance
Demonic cackle of burning forests
Howl of the storm we have brought upon us 
Endless keening above a teeming planet 
Bugle of elk, roar of wave
Clatter of rock, groan of ice
Hymns to the Father, praise to the Son
A hundred human voices rise as one
Song of the ages, song of the day
Tomorrow's chorus echoes yesterday’s loss
Calls to prayer to work to battle
Used car jingles, cheap commercial prattle
Carols by the fire, snow flake’s whisper
Beautiful boy’s dreaming even breathing sings a
World as it could be

Once upon a time, arriving at the place we’ll never come to
The order comes firing across synaptic relays 
Bouquet of rhododendron trees as tall as need, just as tall as need
Towering over footlights and tweezer arrays, knife switches, dials
“Something to take away the whisky thirst? Perhaps the red pill
Perhaps the blue, or maybe you’d like, I know you’d enjoy
This bottle labelled ‘Drink Me’”
No rabbit foot fable this, the cat is yowling at the dog
Snoring in the Salon de Victrola
Convex one-way mirror window into that other 
Hotel room of the soul.

Leaving before we’ve gotten there
Toyota Corolla on the fritz
Fairy gold coffers carried into 
Presidential suites, turning to mist
With the dawn, John Kennedy’s rocking chair
Silent empty rocking in the wind.
Only the army men remain, 
Plastic in their devotion
Resin hand-grenade eternally hurled
Cold Pleistocene plasticine flame thrower
The radio-man’s antenna has been chewed away.

Only the stones remain, only the songs
Only the stars remain, only those who 
Have lost all there is to lose
Children forgotten on the school steps
Tableau of wrecked cars, broken bones
And the piratical tow truck driver
With his long hair black as sin
And his gold tooth
Assures me that everything will be alright
As he fingers the bone handle of his
Bowie knife.

Two white wolves bloody-tracked
Tongues lolling
Among the snow-drifted junipers
Snow melting, grass springing 
As they chase ghosts of shadowy
Old landlords peeping through
Winter windows.
The flowers spring all at once
Angel-called leaping rainbow
Iris, gigantic roses hurry red and white
Peace gardens of great danger
Two white wolves, bloody-tongued
Among the trees
Devouring the moon.

Two eagles flying west
One in golden day’s first light
Then dusk silhouette
Against white wheatfield flies.
Single blackbird singing on a wire,
Liquid tune in the fading light.
Sunlit virga, driving draperies
Of darkness gathering from the east.

A long journey approaching
Anxious I worry my age
Anticipating the long confinement
Hurtling through the air to that
Green island that will not leave my dreams.

I know there is no twilight precinct
No tangled wood of wonder
Only the bustle of cities, touristic hustle
Perils of automotive wander
On narrow roads.

A long journey approaching
Anxious at implications of return
A second appearance inviting appraisal
Summings up, inquiries on my 
Contribution to the world since last 
We appeared unbidden at the place of the head.

A long journey approaching 
Apprehensive I feel my age 
Aching heels, frets that once again
I will miss the trout and the fiddlers
That my beautiful boy’s reluctance
Will turn adolescent surly
That my love’s sorrow at leaving 
The creatures that she cares for
Carries more weight than the imaginary
Stone I pack to set upon ancestral sorrow. 
And the flowers in our own garden blooming
Are as worthy of conceit as the 
Wild orchid of the Burren
That eludes me, entices, unbalances me

A thousand thoughts come racing
Flights hotels trout chasing
Vast cliffs ancestral stones
Museums filled with ancient gold
Precious books, oceans roar
Memory of the heroic martyred ones
Halls of time to deep to hold in mind
Wave skipping pebble fleeing from the shore.
A long journey approaching. 

Rooks shout to one another
From tree to tree breaking the
Quiet of the morning
Morning of resurrection
Resurrection of the dead
Resurrection of dreams
Resurrection of stories
Vague notions 
Too big to be encompassed
To be bounded by my little thought.

Guard us.
Lambs drowse in old fields
Blissful in the unseasonable sunlight
Guard them
Bullets fly around old walls 
Bleeding Ulster’s ruinous ancient pride
On this holy morning, guard us.

Against manipulations of false patriots
Against subtle lies of false shepherd’
Against persuasion to false choices.

Hurtling through green fields
We took asudden knuckle-whitening
Last second turn in the gravel lot
With picnic tables
Where we ate our salmon and brown bread
Swearing we could forsake all other food
Finding ourselves unaware at Rath Croghan
We climbed Medb’s mound, surveying the
Green plain of Connacht through the mist 
Mists of stories, mists of time
Mists concealing walls of stone
Walls of thought, walls of tradition and prejudice.
We marveled at old stories 
Lying beneath our feet 
Rising with the mist 
From dreams to fill the
Waking world with songs
And with tears.

Querencias and Dreams of Return

a deep well of longing 

The title is taken from a phrase coined by William Butler Yeats, “The Land of Hearts Desire”, to signify the personalized home-place / heart-space which we all seek, our querencia, as it is called here in the mountains of New Mexico. 

The loss of such places, and the yearning to rediscover them and to assign meaning to new places, is a crisis in our ever more placeless society. It is a root of our modern alienation. As Scottish writer Alastair McIntosh puts it, “The great disease of our times is meaninglessness.”

 Like many other people scattered across the globe, my family origins lie along the western fringe of the holy islands on the fringe of Europe. springing from a desire to see places that have such ancestral significance to so many, which many of us dream of but have never seen. 

Our grandparents’ grandparents knew the names and the meanings of these places. Long after they were driven from hills and forests they had walked for millennia, these places still exist, even if the names are forgotten and the old power lies silent. 

The poems and images have to do with place and its modern negation-- placelessness. They are about the dilemma that in order to have material progress, modern societies seemingly find themselves compelled to continually erase the past. 

I seek meaning from those lost places that the modern world has displaced and found no replacement for. They are about the significance of a single tree, of a ruined house, of old fields and faces in the grass. They about standing like stone, about going to water. 

“Let what can be shaken, be shaken
And the unshakeable remain.
The Inaccessible Pinnacle is not inaccessible
So does Alba surpass the warriors
As a graceful ash tree surpasses a thorn
Or the deer who moves sprinkled with the dewfall
Is far above all other beasts
- Its horns glittering to Heaven itself.”
Hugh MacDiarmid, Direadh III

Beyond the ruined tower on the hill, looking over lonely mountains
Beyond the fallen croft, woods growing up through the hearth
Beyond the abandoned schoolhouse leaning empty in the wheatfield
Beyond drowned towns, groves of our ancestors
Beyond that nameless place in the fir wood, 
Shining with salal and huckleberry 
Laid low, obliterated, erased by the chainsaws
Beyond impossible promises mocking us
Yellowing newspapers, political pamphlets, 
Books of forward looking poetry
Worn out shoes, junk autos, broken kitchen appliances
Beyond you, beyond me
Beyond the limits granted by power
Rises new strength, new nation, new people in an old place
Rises kindness, fulfilment, meaning, a place in the world
Above the wreck of history rises my country that could be.

The swindlers sit in the high place
The cheats take the prize
Screen shows their sad face
Repeats all the lies
Exalted ambition
Truth and honor dwindle
Shame of a nation.

Your flat-black wall 
Adorned with spikes
To burn and rend and tear
Is the reflection of your twisted soul.
Caged children desperate families 
Sick in their parking lot pens
Sleepless in your asphalt heart, 
Show the lie in the lofty words -
Freedom, justice, valor.

Run on for a long time, you’ve run 
On for a long time
Better for you the millstone.
Rotting in your gilded sepulcher
you won’t be mourned.

When all your planning for currency schemes,
Social structures of equity,
Programmes for the diminution
Of sad loneliness, choosing of anthems,
Disputations over tartans and the body of John Knox 
Mouldering in parking space number twenty three
When all the analysis of Ireland’s borders and the vetting
Of a new Scandalignment of niceties
I say when all that is through
You’re going to have to show the lying
Manipulating murderous divisive bastards
The Door.

Leaving Auld Reekie in a rented Vauxhall
Looking for the ancestral hill
Driving on the left (so unremarkable to you)
Crawling through roundabouts of Fife industrial estates
(Business Parks in my Amerenglish)
Nae vacation this – cam we tae California?
Roads narrow, reaction time shrinking
As we see those first terrifying signs
ONCOMING TRAFFIC IN CENTER OF ROAD
We narrowly miss whisking awa’ tae Dundeee
And I doubt a grisly end in some
Crossbow killing housing estate
(Apartment complex in my Amerenglish)
Then tractors and auld hotels with standing stones 
(Look! Is that an oil platform?)
We are tailgated headlight flashed near sideswiped
Hooted at by claxons of rental BMWs
Yellow heraldry suspicious of Sassenach American German
(The difference is slight)
Until I am compelled to give my best world-shattering 
Johnny Cash salute - erect middle finger pointing awa’ tae hell
More tractors 
Muddy rocky road
Abandoned stone barns
We missed the road back there - there was no road
And there, our eponymous hill and the burn of our name
We stop by woods next to the barley field
And I dig a white stone out of the mud for my father.

But wha’ went ye intae this wilderness tae see
A man in comfortable clothes?
Comfortable clothes are found in rich men’s houses
I went to see the sproutin’ seeds o’ freedom
Or a muckle o’ independence
But, ach no, I slept in a rich man’s house
Auld Reekie uisge warehouse 
Turned Air BnB
I ate in fancy restaurants
Where arrogant waiters judged me by my shoes
And refused us seating in the speckled cowhide booths
In short, in long,
I contributed to the slavery
To the subjugation of the place I long to see free 
Dream to help set free
Oh, I glared at the big Sassanach beratin’ the wee bookshop clerk
About the despicable lack of choice in notebooks
Alba Saor!
But where were your banners , your marches
Your speeches and pamphleteers?
In the whole country I caught ne’er  breath o’ the wind o’ liberty
Not until I got to Eire and met those grim looking bastards in Bogside
Marching for Catalonia in the police wagon’s flashing glare. 
Wheesht, here’s to Eire, and to Catalonia.