Classic Poem

I There was one man and he was not an Irishman but he might have been one with all his lying thieving ways. Nor was he a priest but he might have been one because of his way of walking through the woods as if it were a church, murmuring, with a cross around his neck that he kept there for the shape of the thing. Gothic or Corinthian the pillars or the pine trees might have been for all he knew the difference. But if a beast were sick he could turn up its hoofs and nurse it like a mother.

George, and will ye be my bridegroom was the refrain in the wind and in the mosses whose species he knew in the sole of his foot. He was busy following the soft secret track of a deer running and he could not very well reply.

And will ye be my bridegroom
And wear a crown of glory In stomping your foot in that impatient way, he said, you stomped out the mark of the deer or whatever it was running. When he rolled back the sleeves of his shirt there were his arms out bare like twists of taffy. One of them he put lovingly around the soft bowed neck of the ailing cow. The lady had lost her cud, it had dropped into one of her stomachs. A cud, he said, it is made of daisy hearts and dandelions. He held a bouquet of it flowering in his hand. Her rosy tongue hung through her teeth, her noble breath lolled on this couch of flesh, her cloven feet gave battle to a thousand blades of grass.

And will you be my bridegroom, George,
And wear a crown of glory
Will you take the dark for an evening cloak
And the Pleiades for planets
Will you dance on the turnpike with me, George And will you shut up for half a minute, said George, until I get this cud in her mouth can't you be quiet. He took care of the stock. He was a horse thief and a liar, it turned out. He was no good to anybody at all. Hours he wasted in making necklaces for the goats to wear to market. His fingers were as thick as dice, and just as square as. Do you think men lie still when they're dead, I said to him. Do you think men who could harpoon a whale, tan a lion, geld a stallion would ever take it lying down? I bet they stand up shouting, do you bet they're quiet? Can't you be quiet yourself, said George, until I've found one with four leaves to it?

II When the old women went into church it was for a sight of the Bridegroom. They came along the roads and peering into the ditches, keeping their eyes and their ears cocked for a sign of him, for he was on the run. At high mass a special service was sung for him. It soared from the young boys' throats, rose high and clear against the stone and the remains of it dropped down the spine like icy drops of water.

He is fairer than May weather and the fruit trees, they sang.
Happy is the woman to whom he gives his hand.
(When he lifts up his eyes, the rivers leap with salmon.
He need only whistle for the waves to sound his name.)
I have seen him cross the lake like a rainbow crossing.
In summer he runs like a comb through the rye.
Often have I hung my head for shame when he passed me.
His gait is swift, his flesh is tough as leather.
His heart is like a hawk's flight.
Ah-ah-ah-men! From the altars and the chapels had the Bridegroom departed. The crosses all over the land were as empty as the loins of the Virgin. Nothing of any value had he left behind. The gold was gone from the vestry and the velvet from the wardrobe. He had stripped the braid from the bishops' dresses and cut the lace from the abbots' gowns. Somewhere, it might very well be in the bogs, he was melting down the gold of the loving cup and the silver of the tabernacle maybe. In the church did the voices of the choirboys exhort him, but he had no time for it. He had a hand like a kick in the tail. Some of them had felt the side of it on their bottoms, not once but many's the time. No matter how loud they sung, it would do them no good now. The Bridegroom had staunched his wounds, girded up his loins, and silently gone thence.

III

THE SONG OF THE BRIDEGROOM

I've been crying in the dark for my own land
You can know it by the way its rivers flow
Like a blindman I could find my way betwixt them
From the queer coast to the rocky jaws of Ulster
(By running my fingers over their faces would I tell them,
The northmen or the south, by the way their hearts were beating.)

I've been crying like a child for my own land
Or like a man bereaved. Let drink cascade
From mouth to heart, fall cupped in kneecap,
Cavort to temple, turn tongue to fire and breast to pulpit.
I shall die alone
Without the bride's soft arms repining
The ringdove sobbing, the marrow melting.
(By the way their color changes when I strike them drunk
Can I weed out the men of North Ireland from those of the South
And God deliver me.) Let whiskey sing requiem for us:

Ah, what is it they have in their eye that nobody else has
In the curse, the kiss, the hot look on the face
That nobody else has. Whisper what is it or was it
That nobody else has and what will it ever be?