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