New Moon by Maoilios Caimbeul
The surgeon said, ‘I’ll make a moon / on your tummy, a new moon, / a sickle, a crown / from which the new child will come.’ / Her wound will not be like His, / blood and water will not flow down / but a new thing will grow from the soil, / something unexpected - / something not at all expected.
Raise the sails to the mast/tree, / the journey will be far from the island / and from the well; raise the sails
Dear friend, / I was also in the cosmic clay / for nine months of the seven weathers, / for the months of the seven moons. / The moon touched the swan, she made a wound in my love’s skin; / the wound was like a moon, / like a new moon, merciless and care-less.
And all the time the birds were singing, / the yellow-beaked black-bird warbling - / and the redbreast so shy - / ‘It is fated, it is fated, / what will be, will be / and can’t be avoided.’
And we were in the land of bone, / my love and I, / in the land of the cells gone wrong, / in the land of the shadow of death.
High in the sky / the geese make for the south, / like an arrow in the heart of love. / From cold to warmth, / rac, rac, their cry, / led to their grazings / by their DNA. / We are going northwards / to the kingdom of ice.
Everything is sacred / and whole in the kind cell, / although the buzzard sits / on the fence-post, waiting. / My love is perfection, / the moon rising above the trees - / the moon of wholeness in the sickle / the healthy child from the soil.
Everything is sacred / and whole in the kind cell; / the cowpat itself like a swan / which releases the yellow flower; / and Calum Calle sits / with the bird in his cell, / and the bird is as if it says: / ‘I’m here – everything / is right with the world:’ / the saints speak to the saints / in the great cell/church of the world.
Far away from the island of birds, / there is a great scatter of buildings like a prison, / brown blocks rising to the sky, / glass upon glass, / endless corridors full of angels and wretches, / tired legs going from floor to floor, / passing patients in wheelchairs, / and the place is like a vessel lost in mist, / people coming to be healed and to die. / A big sign says NHS Property: NO Smoking, / and outside the doors is sprinkled / with cigarette butts. ‘Give me a smoke, / I’m dying anyway.’
Here is where the knife will enter flesh, / where the swan will be wounded, / and where it will do the secret ploughing, / like a plough planting new seed, / a seed which will grow in secret / far from the isle of the birds.
Cell knowledge in the flesh, flesh knowledge in the cell; / cell knowledge in the brain, brain knowledge in the cell; / cell knowledge in the bird, bird knowledge in the spirit; / the demon in the prison cell, / the saint in the cell of the bird; / The Source in the cell of the cosmos, / in the cell of the clay, in the cell of man, / in the message of cow dung.
The cross/plough was sen in the dreams of the starts, / that the Source came in the form of a cell / like a bird above the trees of understanding, / that the most holy came as a child / and that we crucified Him on the cursed cross, / and that He will come into the heart as a cell / which will grow to be a way, / like a seed planted by the plough/cross to loutish at last as a fortunate flower.
The picture of Christ was on the table / before the swan was wounded, / and it fell by itself to the floor. / The first time was I May / before we knew there was anything wrong, the picture fell by itself to the floor; / the second time the bird was wounded / with a new moon on the horizon / and the picture fell by itself again / as she was going to the shop / to buy cigarettes; she didn’t buy / them any more; the third time she was weak /. As water and thinking to go out to work, / it fell again, as if it said, ‘Don’t go,’ and she didn’t. / Shelomah, the bird of the cell is that near, / beyond the saying of words.
Johnson, D and Caimbeul, M (2017) An Dà Anam. Isle of Skye, Clò Dhùnain