Rain Falling in the Far West

                                          I 

I am standing, old and self-absorbed as Lear,
out on bogland, where I started;
there are skylarks, pipits, black-monk crows
and plover, secret in the heathers, calling; dried blood
on the scraws, gnawed gristle,
furred creatures cowering, the raptor hawk;
where have I been, all these years, far from myself?
Soft rains drift in mist-shapes
shading everything to grey; I would hear the voices
of those I have loved and lost, I standing now on the brink.
Of Aquinas at the last they said
that he was laying down the instruments
of his writing; what I have done
feels like turf-dust. What is there left, but spirit?

II

Rain is falling in the far west, as it has ever fallen.
Easy to miss the star against the city lights
and shoppers; here, on bogland, is a side-aisle quiet, where nothing extraordinary happens, where you may accept
emptiness and the cotton-quivering
of a solitary self; here, too, the harrier is close, what is eternal
hovers, it is the dread festival of God's descent
into the flesh, his presence
in the ongoing history, heart in hiding, forever
beginning. The night is still and clear under frost, great clouds
passing, slow, relentless; an ocean-full
of stars, a cradle moon, and in the windows of the houses
candles lighting; sweet shiver-glass of ice
on the bogpools, and one great light reflecting.

III

Wild honey hides among the combed roots, in the dark
it scents the air. Childheart,
I was told the bleak mythologies of black-bog waters: the giant otter in the pools, black-souled goblin with his storm lamp,
and Clovenhoof himself, ready to reach
a leathery claw out of mud to take your ankle; there would be
fear, and fascination, there would be danger, stumbling, a fall.
In the far west rain is falling; there is epiphany
in the movement of a fox, long-fellow, sleek, a languid
lovely-loping, orange-brown body slipping through
brown-orange growth; in the soft
dew-gentled dawn, the spread-out jewellery of gossamer webs
shivers silver in destructibility;
the heathers, too, ripple in the breeze, like water.

IV

I put my ear down close to the bog-earth
roots, to hear
the heartbeat of the magma; there are no hard edges in the peatland,
no table-corners,
cupboard-doors, car-boot-sharpness; I am in love
with earth, the various, the lovely, though
it is not home: for it is written—
God so loved the world ... I stand
on the wallow-surface of belief, winds from the sea
taking my breath away;
the paths across the bog lead always on
further into bog, then
stop. Nowhere. Where God is.

V

Here is no locked tabernacle; God exults, in frochan,
bilberry root. Here is no church, stone-built,
no steeple proud in its piercing of the skies; sometimes a dragonfly, its rainbow gossamer wings, passes by
low over the cottons; I can kneel
on sphagnum moss, its soft green sponge, to ask forgiveness
because resurrection is ongoing; curlew calls, alleluia; and still
all of the bogland is in motion, bleached bones
of elk and wolf and hare, rising inexorably towards the surface.
Bell rings for angelus, the stooping figures rise and stand a while
in the transept of eternity. Rain
is falling in the far west, as it has ever fallen; in the windows
candles lighting;
what is there left, now, but spirit?


--John F. Deane