AT A SCOTTISH TAVERN The dead of Argyll are solemn tonight. They flow as does 'unspoken water' gathered secretly from under bridges, becoming their own rituals for healing a plague of time at grave-flowered twilight. The dead flow toward low tavern candles, where a poet is reading her whispered poems. To the north, quay waves approach to listen, and Caoniteach forsakes her endless washing, to shuffle with a bag of portents to the tavern. Strong drinks are on the tables of philosophers and melancholiacs. The moon faints behind great wings of black Boobrie perched on the roof. Brollachan postpones nightmare errands. Old Scots whispered of language's powers. The poet's lines console the sorrowed dead, pleasing them with her Gaelic echoes.... Evocations of ancient weathers that rolled in unsettling rumors. And how the sun would darken, eclipsed not by moons but infants laid too soon beneath grim stones. Ecstasies of accidents on oceans and the flailing of the drowned. Hymns to gods beyond all belief. Laments for lovers gone to Glasgow. The waning of flowers toward winter and delirium from the honeyed mead. All this she spoke in secret cadence. All this the gathered spirits drank. Across away on night-splashed rocks of the Hebrides, Loreiag draws from wind the traces of spoken poems. Threading them on her loom, she spins bleak beauties into warm shrouds for sunken and bone-strewn sailors.
Tim Buck
13