duncanmac.blog

On this first new moon of the new year
Blessings be to Him, Creator, 
King of the moon, Chief of the stars.

Four years ago now since they told
What it was, what the persistent cough,
What I had growing inside my chest.

I remember from that time
That I had half a chance that first year,
Each year it would decline,

Half again and half again
Each changing of the calendar,
Each turning of the year.

So now three in a hundred 
Are the odds, the pot runs low 
Of lots. Lord leave me not with the dead.

Thirty times that first year they beamed
The sun into my chest dripped yew tree poison 
Into my blood, like hemlock it seemed.

A tumor metastasized in my brain
Small, just behind my right ear
I can still feel the hollow

From where they burned it out
Fit my head to a plastic mask
Just like a futuristic Dumas movie hero

Immunotherapy was almost my end
Pembro-lizumab type stuff, made me
Want to strip my skin off, but the cancer didn’t mind.

Back to the yew tree magic, and so
My hair came out, left me looking
Like Uncle Fester, low and sick.

Some days I faced all the pain
In my own strength, fierce. Those days
Came at the beginning, rarely again.

Life was a dark hole, as befits
A dark druidic poison
Tracing its pattern in my veins.

Dark also when my eyes clouded
Film of hazy gold veiling the world
Until I couldn’t read, drive, see the screens

Of all the multifarious little machines
We give our devotion and importance
So I was labeled disabled, capacity doubted

And even significance by wife, employer, friends,
Bound to the couch in chemical gloom
Half seeing flowers, seasons pass in their dance.

But for all the angst, the surgeon put it right
In ten minutes of opiate fog and flashing lights
Everything clear as crystal, shining new.

But of course the yew tree lost its magic
As all earthly tactics in this deadly fight
And inexorable the cancer grew.

I can sense it in these stilted words
Stultified, inane, repetitive, lame
Tedious changes of drugs and regimens

The tired feeling telling me that the game
Is over, the turn taken, the bird flown
Without a song before summer’s end.

But that Indian flower, five fingered leaf
Like the healing hand of the Lord of all,
In a miracle, brought me recovery, relief.

Along with fifty rounds of chemo, taking a toll
Body and mind, slowly poisoned, leaving
Me wallowing in dull grief.

So the insurance paid me out
My burying money, the doctor
And the service declaring me unfit

For official government office duty,
Gave me a pension, as close as it gets
To easy street, I doubt.

And now I sit listening upstairs
At the guitar shop, while the boy’s
Lesson plays out, chords and strumming

On the harp that is the foreshadowing
Of the things I wait for, rejoicing
In this likely last year of the world’s coming.

Snow clouds linger over mountains
Sun illumines an elegant skylight
Glow of warm wood on the walls

Wail of angry thrash metal
Mingling with hesitant flamenco
Noise flowing out and up, a fountain

Of accumulated musical wisdom
Evoking the disappeared hopes and wasted 
Work that were mine those ages ago.

This week of scans, brain first, next
Chest and neck and groin
Followed by doctor consultation,

Then the needle through the back
To drain the recurring pleural effusion
That cuts my breath and turns my frame crooked

The way leads ahead toward a concealed path
A closing of ways, satiated hunger, thirst
Finally quenched in the living stream.

But there will be a climb
To get there, poison administered in season
Or a sudden vanishing of the light

As when a benighted mountaineer
Finds his shadow cast across 
Vast forests below him, haloed

On the peak in that dying day, the world
Now a face of broken rock, the abyss
At his feet, the way home shrouded

But a simple song will lead him
Whistled in the night blue dusk
A single star will show the mountain

Where light dwells without shadow
Where joy springs without longing
Perfume of flowers forever unspent

But now this time between becoming
And realization, frosted windows
Opening on unknown woods

Meadows rich with golden flag
Sparrows hunting in the grass
Gold-tinged trees alive in the breeze

Barely heard prayers echo from mossy stone
The song keeps time with the moon,
Until the moon is no more

Ages pass in the sun-lit morning,
All the miraculous birds in the tops of the trees,
A river of crystal born in the rock.

So I will pass on, go up, rise,
Higher up, further in, according
To Your will. So be it. I am still.

In the blessing of clouds
Shielding from the sun’s hammer
In hope of rain
In fluidity of birdsong
In power of wind
Moving around us like your Spirit
Thanks to you, Father
Thanks to you, Friend and Brother, Son
Thanks to you Holy Spirit
For dawn prayer with your people
For songs of praise early in the morning
For your endless care stretching back
Beyond my beginning
For the endless life you promise in Jesus
My Lord, my Chief, my King
Who has bought me with his blood
For your Light filling the world
For the improbability of resurrection
For the blessing of the sun breaking
Through clouds of time
I praise you. 
Great Father, make your face
Shine on us.

What is this in-between day?
Day between darkness and light,
Day between blood and water.
A shadowed day. Yesterday the sun
Hid its face, today it rises again 
In fire unabated, yet is not risen.
A day of doubting and tears,
A day of crushed hope and vanished
Ambition. Visions grown dim. 
Mountains veiled in cloud.
A sabbath day, a rest when work
Is finished. A broken day, when all
That was true seems undone.
A waiting day for what is to come,
A day filled with the scent of dried blood,
Of myrrh and aloes,
Honeysuckle and frankincense, 
And the hesitant song of birds
Waking in the budding trees.

It seemed a rooster’s call awoke me from my dreams today.
The sun, blood-red, began to mark this day of dread
And suffering, of new things and of finishing, 
As the cock crow and the dawn shattered His friend’s
Self-reliant faith, self-contained bravado, ending
In futile tears and self-recrimination. He runs away
Leaving his Friend to the scoffing soldiers and the torture,
Leaving He who did no wrong to be buffeted and mocked,
Crowned in thorns, arrayed in purple, ordered to prophesy.
All flee away. The whips, the beatings, the bloody pavement
Only preliminary to that long walk to a low hill, carrying
The tree. And even this the conqueror cannot achieve, 
After no sleep, no food, no cooling drink, or touch
Of friendship. He collapses, cannot go on, an unknown 
Dark face is seized from the crowd
By the soldiers – You there, you carry it.
And then the awful nailing, iron driven through the carpenter’s
Good hands, the pilgrim’s weary feet, and the raising
Halfway to the sky, earth just out of reach. The blood covers
Everything, ground, cross, the Crucified unrecognizable
Endures all, the crawling insects sucking creation’s essence,
The tearing pain inside, the sea crushing His heart, soul
Abandonment as all the desperate cries of all time come true
And the face of Creation turns away, the red sun turns black
In despair. He looks into the abyss of human wretchedness
And somehow yet finds love enough amid the agony
To fill it, to finish it. The veil is torn, the spear tears His side,
Pierces His heart, bloody water drains away into sand and rock.
The flies continue to gather and cover as even his mother 
And his brothers finally slip away. The cool of evening descends
And the first crickets call, heralding this new thing, this coming day.
His friends arrange a cold bed in the stone of the rich man’s tomb, 
Their own hearts broken and torn, scatter to grieve and to forget
And to wait the rising of that new Sun, that new day.

The old women in front raise their hands
For a blessing, as the old man’s oxygen
Generator keeps Welsh time to modern praise.
In punctuated silence we contemplate our sin,
His agony, his forgiveness, the coming promise – 
Springs of living water, tears forever dried, 
The Lamb our shepherd and our light,
Salt sea turned fresh by the river forever
Filled with fish, bounded by the wood of life,
Sounds of faraway singing within, scent of flowers
Undiscovered and unknown. But not yet. 
Risen to life, risen to glory, risen with You
Who went before. But not yet. 
Death dead, but not yet. Already, not yet.
Lamb of God, send us your love, send us your blessing,
As the old women raise their hands to pray. 

Morning tears
First spring snow
Round bright moon
Silent house

I awoke this silent blue frost morning
From a dream of lost love,
Walking along a windblown sea, storm
Building in clouds of gold and purple
Tower above green waves straked in living white
A mist of rain falling soft on cold black stones
Her hair free in the thieving wind, our laughter
Like bird song, like old lost lullabies.
This morning the brilliant moon hangs
Like a silver coin, high above dawn clouds
Warming to icy rose. Sun coming up, light
Cascading down on first spring snow, no shadows
In this soft bitter sunrise. The silver-coin
Moon woke me from dreams of vanished
Love, coming through curtains, golden
Clouds veiling the light like her honey hair
Soft over my face, this cold, bright, shadowless
Blue frost dawn.

A year since last I saw your green fields
And woods, your rock-bound purple seas,
O Alba, sad dark land, hollowed out,
Unpeopled, strangled by the dead white hand. 
O land of empty churches, broad skulls 
Of kings, holy islands, gutters filled 
With piss and broken glass, tall dark lands.
Granite markers covered with war-dead names
One-handed taxi drivers, discontented Saxon
Tourists, money-flush Americans, apartment
Blocks filled with lonely old people and refugees, 
Crumbling towers beside the shining loch.
Rain comes, the flood comes, yesterday comes
Tomorrow and tomorrow, brings overdoses in the heart
Of enlightenment and reason, in the shadow 
Of your bright grey-brown cities.

Where are your burning saints - nothing remains
But initials in the pavement, eyes looking out from
The stones. Where are your eagles of remembrance, 
The salmon of wisdom, your otters and foxes? 
Where your reindeer and your wolves?
Where are your burned forests, forgotten woods?
Where the clans of miraculous little birds?
Where your holy women singing as they churn?
Your holy men praying as they fish and farm,
Filling the earth, speaking in vanishing fiery tongues?
Where are your holy children, playing among angels?

How are your chanted prayers fallen silent, 
Your holy stones veiled by time’s deep hazelraw
Your holy women have gone shopping
Your holy men bow before the Sabbath football
The prayer of your birdsong is blurred by muttering
Traffic, the light of your remembrance hidden
Like stars in a neon-smudged sky.
Your cities are filled with sorrow
Your country is emptied, held by a foreign hand,
The rich add house to house and field to field.
Walk over the land and see the foundations
Of the old houses, ghosts of phantom feannagans
Abandoned boat houses facing an empty sea
Abandoned hopes as life turns to drudgery
Abandoned mountains, islands bombed and poisoned,
Filled with eternal waste and plagues.
Young men cannon fodder, abandoned to junk and porn
Young women made objects, abandoned when worn.

O bird fly free at last
O tree send forth long dormant blossoms
O bell ring out and chase away the ghosts
O salmon return to your old streams
May Alba flourish!
By the preaching of the good Word
By the praising of the holy Name
By the lifting of old burdens of injustice
By the opening of dried-up springs
Through remembrance of old songs and new
Through the sentimental kail yard to new poetry
Through shortbread-tin religion to old prayers prayed anew
Through the lost imagined past to a human future
Through lingering twilight death to a living morning.

Dark columns echo the surging green sea,
Place of music, cave of lost heroes,
Burned out fires figured in black stone
Standing alone or hanging impossible over all.
I sing into the inaccessible mouth of darkness,
Songs of mountains, sea and cloud.
None answer out of the mist of time.
None awaken from the muttering echoes,
Except surging sea music and the call of birds.

We humans have just learned to talk, just now
The fractured speech falls into place, just how
You might imagine it happening – just now
The tongue-tying cords relax and let words spill,
Fly up, fly out, soar away, glide down
Like wounded quail
Pecos! Chicago! Chicago! Chicago!
Neat and modest, arrayed in gray, 
Clothed in feather flannel seed scratching
Suits even of a Sunday, scratching seeds 
On Sunday. 
We have been here before, three hundred
In the back yard, on the roof, in the old
Blue spruce lining the driveway 
On their last legs. Building desperate 
Nests in the arbor vitae along 
The abandoned street.
We quail have just learned speech, 
What should we say just now, just how,
Just like you might imagine it happening
Just now as the world spun around, 
Flipped over again. 

Beside a glittering precipice
Dust diamonds sun refracting
White granite reflecting
Heat, aridity, the encrusted hazelraw
Wrist-deep in the blind man’s grasp.

He feels the sun on his face
Reflected off the rock, singing from the rock
Behind him, cool, and beckoning
Is the void. Illusion of waterfall from 
A hidden mist of light

Way trodden by ten thousand thousand
White coated, engowned in sparkling
Robes. Jays and squirrels observe unseen
Oblivious of the parameters of 
Cliff and tangled tree.

Blind, he works his way across the blind
Cliff face, force of gravity carrying him up
He knows the deathly scent of the pearly
White flowers at his feet, his heart
Transparent before God.

Vague murmurs of prayer, rehearsed
And unrehearsed, come to his lips
ar-Nathair for walking, God with me rising up, 
Dia liom ag eirigh, the wind grows loud,
The sun intensifies

Trees thin and dwindle, water falls silent
Far off, far away, long fallen echoes
Of trudging footsteps. The strong pass by, 
Some sad and disgruntled descend
Confused by the smooth rock

Erased by time, ground out in mercies
Of glacial age, recorded in unknowable
Striations laid down by the last pebble
Under the glacier, gouging forever its
Inscrutable tracing.

He does not see the way, only feeling
Underfoot star-shaped scars of blasting
Left by horse-bound soldiers waging modern
War upon an ancient mountain way, 
Sky map of stone scars now polished by black 
Powder, leather sole, rubber tennis shoe tread.

Thirsty he shuffles along, bewildered bobcats
Avoid him, ravens cruise the modern road
Below for squirrel tragedies, sun grows stronger, 
Wind grows louder, the way winds up, 
Entering the groves of singing perfumed trees.