Three Winter Tales
After Kenneth MacLeod
I
In the year of the dead birds
Saint Kenneth fed some sparrows
as a last rite under an oak.
In the watching man’s heart
something else crystallised
where usually waterfalls froze.
His eyes misted over –
and that was the true miracle:
now the mountains melt and grow.
II
Saint Bride’s bird saved
the Christ from his enemies
– covered him in sea yarn.
Down they came from the mountain
but couldn’t find anyone,
saw no trace of god or man.
So the bird daubed white
by Michael for her sins,
went back to catching oysters
And saving children’s souls,
bringing them in in a boat
from the brink of the other world.
III
The black fiddler on the boat on fire,
the village watching from a darkened shore
his ship still hurtling as pyres of foam
Leap and lick at the man in flame
whose grin is the gleam their watching eyes
catch from the cliff like a bad sunrise,
The speed of everyone’s madness set
in time to the tune in their blood,
and the cold wail of some poor soul
Long held groaning down in the hold,
bound for the black life under his sail
where no more songs prevail.