Another Look at Brown

The Lodging
George Mackay Brown

The stones of the desert town
Flush; and, a star-filled wave,
Night steeples down.

From a pub door here and there
A random ribald song
Leaks on the air.

The Roman in a strange land
Broods, wearily leaning
His lance in the sand.

The innkeeper over the fire
Counting his haul, hears not
The cry from the byre;

But rummaging in the till
Grumbles at the drunken shepherds
Dancing on the hill,

And wonders, pale and grudging,
If the queer pair below
Will pay their lodging.


Oh, this is a magnificent poem! Let’s read it again slowly.

That word flush in the first verse should not be understood merely as a synonym for blush, but more in its sense of exaltation, the way someone will walk into a room flush from an early morning walk along the sea. In this way, the stones recall the moment in Luke 19:37-40 when the Pharisees ask Jesus to rebuke his disciples for loudly praising him. Jesus explains that, “if [my disciples] should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.” This is what the stones do in the poem, responding to the Incarnation—a cosmic event when heaven, like a star filled wave, steeples down. If the spires atop a cathedral represent man’s reach for God, on Christmas Eve God returns the compliment.

Most men, however, are unaware of the wondrous inhalation Nature has made. They remain ignorant of the divinity that cascades down on them. The bar crowds continue to sing their filthy ditties, the occupation forces are weary, bored and melancholy—and businessmen continue to cavort with Mammon in midnight obsession. When heaven breaks in upon him, the world’s most famous innkeeper grumbles and assumes that the shepherds he sees dancing on the hill are drunk—just as the inhabitants of Jerusalem would later assume that the apostles on Pentecost were intoxicated with new wine. The innkeeper does not hear the new cry coming from the dilapidated barn down the road. His only wonder is a question: Does any money come from Nazareth?

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"The Lodging" is found in The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown, Copyright 2005, John Murray, publishers.

Two Poems by George Mackay Brown

The virtue of death is in its ability to concentrate the mind upon the beauty and joy of life. George Mackay Brown lived on the Orkney Islands in the northernmost reaches of Scotland and the two poems that follow are meditations on that bittersweet truth.


Kirkyard_____________________________

A silent conquering army,
The island dead,
Column on column, each with a stone banner
Raised over his head.

A green wave full of fish
Drifted far
In wavering westering ebb-drawn shoals beyond
Sinker or star.

A labyrinth of celled
And waxen pain.
Yet I come to the honeycomb often, to sip the finished
Fragrance of men.


In Scotland a church is known as a kirk. This poem describes the local cemetery and the poet offers his readers three metaphors in which to house the dead.

The first is that of an army—silent, victorious—“column on column,” each with a stone banner or tombstone over his head. In Christian ritual, the stone placed at the head of the grave is emblematic of the soul’s communion with God. At Bethel, Jacob busied himself with stones. He put one upon another and made an altar to God, but he kept one stone apart for a pillow and that night dreams like water, like Lazarus came forth.

In the next verse, the graveyard becomes “a green wave full of fish”—a translucent wave full of fish that is drifting far away from mortal islands into the mythic West. This wave will break upon shoals with greater depth and height than what we are familiar with.

The final image is that of a honeycomb, “a labyrinth of celled and waxen pain.” This is a most profound metaphor—one that hints at the strong monastic traditions of these islands. The poet comes to the Kirkyard “to sip the finished / fragrance of men.” Such words suggest sacramental imagery and—set in the context of the honeycomb where each cell contains not only honey but the promise of new life—are not as depressing as they otherwise would be.


Brown makes a similar point in the next poem. One must study the meaning of these words carefully to fully appreciate the Poet’s metaphor.


The Coat

She bowed in her door, all ripeness.
The reaper went round and round.
Wave after wave of bread
Fell with a secret sound.
She sent the shuttle flying,
She laid the new cloth by,
And through that yellow spindrift
She sent a drowning cry.

With lie and crust and rag
Between two trees we move,
The drifting apple blossom
And the three nails of love.
Naked we come and we go.
Even the Incarnate One
Shed his seamless splendor
Under a sackcloth sun.

The old ploughman of Gyre
Laughed above his ale.
Lie after lie he stitched
Into a masterly tale.
He put down an empty mug.
The thread shore in his throat.
Between crib and coffin
You must dance in a beautiful coat.

In the first verse, the reader is introduced to a weaver. The shuttle is a device the young woman uses to carry the woof threads crosswise between the warp threads—those than run through the length of her material. The (grim) reaper is the other character in the verse—the one who ends life by cutting the stalk and harvesting the grain within. His movements are the conclusive ones, going round and round this field of wheat and with each passing year “wave after wave of bread / fell with secret sound”--the realities on the other side still kept from the knowledge of men. Eventually the weaver will be his victim—her work then abandoned. Spindrift is the salty sea spray that is blown upon the wind—its coat slowly accumulates on those who live upon the islands and are therefore intimate with the sea. And salt, let it be noted, is a preservative.

So, in the next verse, we live “with lie and crust and rag.” That is to say, we live out our days knowing that we will become horizontal, covered over and decomposed. Our life is lived between those mythic trees: “the drifting apple blossom” that permits us to partake of Eden and the crucifix—the three nails of love that whisper us to Calvary. Even Jesus had his seamless robe removed beneath an eclipse of the sun.

In the last verse, we meet a ploughman in his pub, fully enjoying life, drinking and telling his tall tales as he weaves them, lies that somehow add up to a glorious truth. Even as he ploughs the soil, symbolically digging his own grave, he makes up the stories that document the thread of his life—stories that in his throat shore or prop up his existence. Likewise, between the applewood and the cross, between our crib and our coffin we each will dance in the coat we weave—the ploughman, like Joseph, in a coat on many colours. These coats like Saints preserve us.

There are, of course, those who revile the dance, who put on a shroud before life has ended. Next week, we’ll let our poet—George Mackay Brown—tell us about such a man: a man whose interest is not in the tale, but in the tally and the till.

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"Kirkyard" and "The Coat" are taken from The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown

The Foyer___________________________

The Epiphanies__________

...

We cannot cling to poems

like reins on a starlit gallop.

They fall from us, decompose,

become the planets we pursue.

We trace our early orbits

looking for coins and lambs,

compositions in the Milky Way

and when poems come again

into the night sky, they fall

from heaven like stardust

on earth. Nativities sparkle

in snow--glimmers of a hallowed

present. But our own lungs send

forth the stars that spirit us to

Bethlehem.

...

(C) Douglas Donaldson 2007

...

We are told that astrology is a discredited science, but for all of that it was the astrologers who developed the idea. The planets and comets seen moving through our constellations were assumed to be more than cosmic rocks and gases. When God said in Genesis, “let them be for signs and for seasons” neurological connections were forged in the human mind. God's children were then and there given a potential for poetry and from the ancient poems came the unexpected and more necessary gift of prophecy.

So, if God is seen moving among the stars and constellations, He is more evident still in our own thoughts—especially those thoughts that take wing and become the oracles and the canticles that live in the literature and music of our race. It was not fire and rock per say that moved the Babylonian Magi to Bethlehem, but the idea that such a sight was a portent—a sign of miraculous birth; and this idea was safely kept for generations in the poems and prophecies of several cultures—our own musings spirit us, as the poem says.

The Rock and Gas Companies we will have with us always. They want to harness energy, perfect technology and charge us whatever the market will bear for the heretofore-free gifts of God. I have started this blog hoping to add a bit of gold dust to my side of the balance. I want to visit Abraham’s Muse again and again and put our canticles into columns. It is simply good to immerse our selves in delight at the wonder and depth of God’s creation. It is sometimes also good to lament our folly and admit our sorrows.