The Skelligs, 13/6/93. By Mike Cavanagh
Ragged, towering rock islands off the south-west coast of Ireland. Abandoned now, from the 6th to 12th centuries they were a monastic colony of which now only remains their stone-corbelled houses, chapel and ruined walls. While the only permanent residents now are seabirds, in summer tourists arrive on Skellig Michael, as did I in 1993, hoping for fine weather for the views, to see these islands in their clear glory.
Instead it was cold, grey, windy, raining, visibility down to tens of metres. Scrambling up the hundreds of hand-wrought stone steps to the half dozen ‘beehive huts’, I looked across to where Little Skellig was and couldn’t even see past the low, ruined stone wall ten metres in front of me.
I took shelter in the gloom of one of the huts, the wind moaning, the rain chattering, my despondency growing. Then it dawned on me: how many days just like this had those ascetic monks put up with over the centuries? Wasn’t this more ‘real’ than some picture-postcard views and beguiling summer light-dappled, calm ocean?
Here then, my homage to The Skelligs, and those who were there a long, long time before me.
* * *
"Ah, the wretchedness of it all, Father! We can sail no closer, though the very spray is upon our faces!"
(I)
Listen!
...asylum inviolate,
silence and space;
Listen!
as if it always
was,
always, both here
and
somewhere else.
Listen!
...the drumming of
senseless seas dreaming
rude isles in their midst;
the soundings of seabirds,
their scrimshawed calls becry the opening skies;
and the sighing of stone
ever
beneath the waves tolling,
beneath the birds wheeling,
beneath the calloused sky...
- oh, but only, only
just!
Listen!
...a million feathered flights,
tumbling over countless fish filled meals;
a hundred million years of mineral twistings,
and a thousand years of sedentary, stoic dreams;
and ever, beneath the voices of
the vagrant squalling winds,
ever the sloughing ocean
ever the challenging sea
ever crying its rightful claim
true heart
lone rock.
Listen!
for it is passing;
passing, still,
as always
(II)
Lulled and counter sunk
this counselled altar,
raised to the enigmatic dreaming of simple men;
aspirings steeped in the rocky beds
deep beneath
both the grieving and the worship,
and seeping from the ascension of these scars
crabbed into the island's flank,
carved into the island's flesh
and proffered to the glory
in the patient footfalls
of these
stooped and simple,
men
the glory,
and the worship
steeled in the journey's charge
of mortality's vigilant imaginings,
eked out of shivered stones
and plundered puffins,
the smells of musty seals
and guano's stench;
the archaic light that still is strung
through the needle's eye,
and cast upon the chapel of St Michael
like a blind man's thread
like a gannet's plunge
like a reclamation
bene
dictus
blessed
rock.
(III)
And over the while that men have slept
the years have fretted
fleet across
the surging, churlish waters;
till rushing now the pilgrims come
trading idols
not of salted skies
not of brazen winds and cracking seas
both purposeful and crazed,
but those, wrapped within these lambent days
and calm enrapturing rock walled bays,
as can be embalmed in postcards and little boxes and
spirited away...
though, strangely still,
dispossessed and hungering
to step
dry shod,
upon the nakedness of
rock and monotheistic memories alike;
seeking that which is momentous;
if only
momentarily
and still there is this guiding silence
these clowning birds
… these wheeling,
wheeling cries...
and still,
as wind and wings above,
and fish and whale below, glide by,
still the deeper,
silence clings;
still the deeper still
than that
As the passage of one age is made,
so the passing of one wave,
and time's ocean blithely swirls
around one more randomly
located obstruction.
(IV)
Lone rock -
at the true edge of the world suffers still a subtle siren
who beckons most to the straining heart
and the tillered soul,
who beckons most to men such as these
who believed in miracles,
believed indeed in the indulgences of
time,
believed in their deeds the piety
of raging against the endless litanies
of oceans, winds and rains...
and in the beckoning,
in the supple shifts of time,
in the fey and feckless seas,
in the stark abyssal dreaming,
will be the bending, at the end of all things,
of even such faiths as these,
bedrock truthed,
birthed and anchored
as will all things be, in turn,
turned,
seduced and
finally sundered
from the bind of earth;
the absolution of time
all
to be beguiled by nothing more,
or less, than
the Iscariot kiss
and the lover’s sigh
in the falling of
a drop of water
in the blink of time's
eye
bene aqua
bene aqua
holy holy
falling water
(V)
In nomine patre,
here and all that remains of us,
et filii,
as the rocks remember us,
et spiritu sanctu,
and all our ghosts when gone.
here and all that remains of us,
et filii,
as the rocks remember us,
et spiritu sanctu,
and all our ghosts when gone.
(VI)
Listen!
in the winds
both the lamenting
and the glorying
Listen!
in the winds
both the lamenting
and the glorying
as it ever was as it ever shall be
Listen!
in the rains
both the striving
and the futility
as it ever was as it ever shall be
Listen!
in the oceans
the raging and the silence,
the damnation and humanity,
the exultation, and the stark humility
as it ever was as it ever shall be
Listen,
you wretch of the wester-wind,
scion of the torn-sky's dawning…
for above every stoic rising
it is calling;
below every root sunk to seek the core;
within every moment of defiant silence
it is calling;
behind every watching from dusk to dawn
that which itself has no power,
cannot be seen,
that which forever has no meaning,
that which cries out
to draw you yet under,
to draw you yet down;
cries to drown even you,
in your proud, silent abandon,
cloud-thorn crowned
and
bloodied
rock
oh yes,
even you…
bene infidelitas
bene solitarius
bene infidelitas
bene solitarius
bene infidelitas
omnia semper in tempore.
