CAILLEACH SAYS
.
This is what the
Cailleach says:
I have outlived you,
Outlived the fighting men
With their angry religions,
Their need to keep memory to themselves.
I have forgotten the years, forgotten even my names,
Forgotten all the homes belonging to myself and my daughters.
I walk about, best you if you challenge me.
I do not care that you live or die
Because you shall live and die.
Myself, my daughters, somehow
Avoiding the slaughter, avoiding the bombs,
Avoiding the pious, unholy glory of it all.
Living here and there, bringing luck,
Bringing healing,
Bringing you down-to-earth.
Where are we now?
I am the smoky one, the drift of smoke
Through your desolate city,
The ragged one, the forgotten one
Who cares for the small things,
Who teaches my daughters
To bend and survive, to make bread,
To give milk, to circle around edges,
To pick up the pieces that remain.
The thieves will come,
The do-good priests with their tall tales,
And the old men with their aches and jibes,
And the farmers with their complaints,
And the wind with its news of another war
Made by men.
And we shall remain,
Ragged, unnamed, silent, alone.
Us and our daughters
Holding on to the world.
With our keening and our shroud-clothes.
Waiting to wash the bones clean.
Waiting for goodness to be noticed.
The storm washes clean the slaughter-stone.
Moonlight on the darkening path.
.
simonhlilly 