Deirdre of the Sorrows Read online

  DEIRDRE OF THE SORROWS

  PRAISE FOR KENNETH STEVEN

  Glen Lyon (2013)

  ‘Robustly and sensitively explores the debilitating consequences of abuse, violence and the lack of love. It promises even greater things to follow’

  SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY

  ‘This is no ordinary love story but a complex tale of two people feeling their way towards each other […] wonderful descriptions of a landscape and weather unique to Scotland’

  SCOTTISH HOME AND COUNTRY

  Evensong (2011)

  ‘This collection of poems by Kenneth Steven is stunning. There is a grave beauty in these lines, revealing a poetic voice of great sensitivity. These poems are, quite simply, wonderful’

  ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH

  ‘For those of us who know Scotland, though not as natives, and for those of us who are forever attempting to know ourselves, Kenneth Steven is another inner voice, and never more so than in this collection of his work. Evensong is intimate and beautiful’

  RONALD BLYTHE

  The Ice and Other Stories (2010)

  ‘Beautiful, enchanting, heartbreaking’

  CHRIS DOLAN

  ‘The Ice is an atmospheric, wintry tale of fragile human relationships set in a beautiful but unforgiving landscape’

  JAMES ROBERTSON

  ‘The Ice comes straight out of a tradition running through Neil Gunn and Robin Jenkins – precise, sweetly written, slow moving and with a melancholy air in an uncontrived style’

  DES DILLON

  ‘A wonderful short-story writer – a very beautiful, enjoyable collection from a multi-talented writer’

  OSPREY JOURNAL

  This edition first published in paperback in Great Britain in 2017

  by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd

  West Newington House

  10 Newington Road

  Edinburgh EH9 1QS

  www.polygonbooks.co.uk

  ISBN: 978 1 84967 388 8

  eBook ISBN: 978 0 85790 948 0

  Copyright © Kenneth Steven, 2017

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  The moral right of Kenneth Steven to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library.

  Designed and typeset in Dante by Polygon, Edinburgh

  Printed and bound by TJ International, Padstow, Cornwall

  For Kristina,

  with all my love

  CONTENTS

  Preface

  Deirdre of the Sorrows

  About the Author

  A Note on the Type

  PREFACE

  When I first came to the idea of creating a sequence of poems telling the story behind A Song among the Stones (also published by Polygon), it felt something of a breakthrough. For years I had composed the kind of short lyric bursts that make up the vast majority of contemporary poetry collections. It felt exciting to tell a longer story in this new way, offering a miscellany of tiny windows of light into what might have been.

  And so it felt right to use this form again when I began to think of a re-telling of the legend of Deirdre and Naoise (the Irish Gaelic pronounced Ny-sha). This was a tale I had grown up with: at the close of every family ceilidh, around the open fire my mother would sing ‘Deirdre’s Farewell to Scotland’, supposed to be Scotland’s oldest song. A synthesis of sound and sense, it was so hauntingly beautiful – as was the story that lay behind it – that I cried every time I heard it. I learned and remembered the bones of the legend at a very young age.

  It’s only in recent years I returned to my memories of it and wondered if the fragments of the tale might be shaped into something longer and filled out by the imagination. I also began to think once more of the Deirdre story because I had left Highland Perthshire where I grew up to live in Argyll, and not far from Glen Etive, where the whisperings of legend have Deirdre and Naoise settling. So it was with the western edges of Argyll all around me that I began to re-imagine the legend. But I also felt drawn to work with precisely this story because it felt neglected and even overlooked by artists of all kinds on both sides of the Irish Sea – for of all the great tales of the Celts, this is the great love story shared by Scotland and Ireland. The legend of Deirdre is well enough known in Ireland, though it has been all but forgotten in Scotland.

  I wanted the sequence to bring alive the love story at the heart of the legend, to attempt to breathe into it a timelessness and a living strength. For it is old indeed. The roots of Deirdre and Naoise may be as deep as the Iron Age, and it may be – as so often – that some real kernel of truth lies at the very heart.

  DEIRDRE OF THE SORROWS

  A bird came to her window sometimes

  and she wished she might unhinge the slit of glass

  to let him in. An eye watched her

  as she set her chin on her hands

  and watched him back. Most likely he wanted the fragments of her bread;

  the bird vanished into the green garment of the woods for ever

  when she gave him nothing. And then she waited

  for sun to tip the branches, and the full light

  to set on fire the chamber that was hers.

  A girl with a twisted mouth and half a hand

  brought food and water with her frightened eyes

  each dawn, each dusk. Otherwise she spoke with silence all day long

  and only watched the woods for shrieks of jays.

  At night when the world froze

  and the skies danced with a thousand bits of dust

  she felt like a child, home awakening in her heart,

  and heard her mother calling uselessly across the miles

  her name; the sadness of her name.

  One night of lashing rain, geese scraggling the low skies

  and all the trees gone wild –

  Naoise dared to follow for a drink.

  The door closed on the dark and he saw

  feet following the tunes, faces lit with spilled coins;

  his ears hurt with shouted laughter.

  He slipped in among them and swallowed beer too fast,

  till the world swam and his mouth grew big,

  stories appearing as though from nowhere.

  It was then Niall spoke of her, as slowly they turned to listen –

  a girl kept in the old tower in the forest, like a calf –

  pure and perfect, just for the high king –

  wide face, blue eyes, all shining.

  Niall looked about him, lurched on his stool

  as they listened, careful now and watching;

  his face spoiled and blotched,

  one tooth gone from a fight with Fergus.

  He held them all the same, as a fox

  watches a rabbit till it’s his.

  It was Naoise he settled on at last:

  And if you try and steal her, boy –

  he’ll have your blood for breakfast!

  Even the trees have ears. His brother had taught him that.

  A deer ghosted away on moss hooves;

  fragments of rain glittered the leaves,

  made of the wood a many-greened goblet.

  Naoise knew silence. Once upon a time

  he’d hidden from a father dark with drink,

  learned how to make trees and rocks

  his friends. He crouched no
w like a moss boulder

  and the white tower rose, round, three windows high.

  He waited until prickles of pins and needles

  crept into ankles and hands. He waited, watching

  till he saw her a first time. The wide, white face;

  the red-gold rope of hair. His heart filled

  and he crouched there yet, so his hands hurt

  and he had to move. She saw him;

  their eyes met, their gaze held a long moment,

  then she turned and the glass was empty.

  He waited and hoped and watched

  until the rain whispered louder than ever

  and he was soaked to the very skin.

  All that winter he met her, through the slit of glass.

  She watched for him; her smile glowed his heart.

  He brought her things:

  to admire, to puzzle over, to laugh at –

  always her eyes on the trees, for even the trees have ears.

  Sometimes her left hand brushed him away;

  the high king’s men might be watching, for she knew for sure they did.

  But sometimes there was no fear at all

  and he made faces and mimed so she laughed

  till the tears coursed down her cheeks.

  And when he had slid back into the trees and was gone

  she turned over the memory of him in her mind

  like a faceted stone, blue and white,

  and she thought of him through the long, dark.

  One morning before dawn he chanced on her –

  the girl with the twisted mouth –

  and her eyes grew huge with fear.

  He hushed her, held her soft to the ground,

  put a finger against his lips.

  He had seen her often enough in the tower,

  knew what they paid her to do.

  Now his words toppled in nonsense,

  like boulders careering a hillside.

  What was he to do? Could she help him?

  What could he give her? How much would she want?

  But she stilled him, put a hand on his arm,

  whispered that she knew who he was;

  understood and wished him no ill.

  Her words came in difficult shapes,

  so sore and slow and strange.

  She wanted nothing, just the promise he’d leave in the tower

  a letter saying he was the thief;

  for in three days the high king was to take her –

  and Deirdre would be his wife.

  Now, the girl told him, you must fly:

  come back tomorrow at midnight!

  Naoise fled through the wood till he broke

  out into the gold of the dawn,

  drank from the chattering stream

  till the water had slaked his thirst.

  Deirdre, he thought. Deirdre.

  He whispered her name to the silence

  and thought how she now might be his;

  she was so close he almost could touch her.

  It was the monks who wrote him the letter.

  He bought their silence with the few gold coins

  left to him, long ago, by his father.

  The day breathless and beautiful;

  the last gold of the leaves in the birches.

  He thought of the way they would run;

  readied a boat on its side at the place

  where the river opened out to the sea.

  All that night he lay hearing his heart;

  wondered and worried, wondered and worried,

  until light crept into his cell

  and a robin sang the dawn.

  He staggered naked to the well and broke its film of ice,

  gasped at the shock of cold and looked up at the crows

  rising like smoke from the woods.

  Was all of this madness? What if the girl with the twisted mouth

  had the high king’s men all ready?

  He hurt with the fear of it a moment, then blinked.

  All he could do was believe; no battle was ever won

  without a deep breath of faith. If he failed,

  he dared not think of the high king’s vengeance.

  If he kept a single candle of faith alive –

  she might be his, despite all the darkest odds.

  Midnight. He could carry no light

  for fear the woods still watched.

  He knew his way blindfolded; a splintered moon

  came and went through gusting skies.

  Midnight. His heart drummed

  so loud he dreaded it might rouse them.

  And there the tower, three windows dark –

  for a moment he feared it all nonsense,

  that Deirdre slept and the girl had done nothing

  but sell him for dirty silver.

  He breathed till his fear subsided

  and the world stopped spinning at last.

  He bit his lip till a single bead of blood appeared.

  Then – out of the shadows, across the glade –

  as he reached for the door it opened;

  the girl with the twisted mouth pulled him upstairs.

  Leave the letter here on the table: I’ll tell them

  you broke your way in and stole her;

  the men who watch the woods are at the tavern,

  only a handful are left behind,

  and the chances are they’re asleep. Now go –

  take the keys and lock me inside –

  throw them away once you have fled!

  Only then did he see Deirdre at last,

  watched as she and the girl held close,

  their faces pressed tight and tender.

  Thank you for all you have given;

  I’ll never forget your kindness.

  Then the descent into darkness –

  the door thudded shut; the trembling key twisted –

  their hands joined as they ran, as they flew,

  fast as young hinds, past flickering trees,

  further and further till he knew the boat was below them.

  Only then did he turn and look, listen –

  not a single figure, yet he knew the woods were watching;

  he sensed the eyes, felt them burning.

  Deirdre tugged at him, dragged him awake and he turned,

  hauled out the boat to the water, and it was as though

  he feared it might not even float.

  But already the land was leaving them

  and the thought thrilled through his veins –

  it had happened and their eyes met and smiled;

  he dropped the keys deep in the water.

  And then the sea wove them into her garment;

  the slow breathing of the waves, the lift and drag.

  What in all the wonder of heaven had she thought of

  to follow this boy over the water to Alba?

  He scarcely knew her name; like all the rest

  he had dreamt something in her blue eyes

  and thought he had seen her soul.

  Then a yellowness in her mouth, a sourness

  that rose and fell until she had to lie,

  the sky spinning about her. But he was there,

  his blanket over her, his hand smoothing her fear,

  and words she could not hear soft against her cheek.

  She told him how the girl with the twisted mouth

  had said she should run away;

  that the high king had no kindness in him,

  wanted only pretty playthings.

  He told her how first he heard of her,

  had lain awake a whole night through –

  and when he saw her in the tower window

  he’d longed for her to look at him.

  They were silent as the land was left behind,

  and he did not know what more to say

  but found her hand in the darkness

  and kept it safe a time, warm in his own.

  Not an island,
just a ghost of rock –

  a bare tooth in the gaping mouth of sea.

  She wanted to do nothing but lie in the boat;

  he tugged her up to a ledge out of the wind’s reach,

  wrapped her in his own garment, knelt before her;

  babbled words she hardly heard.

  How he made a fire she never knew;

  her teeth chattered and her hands were raw,

  so sore she felt they might not move again.

  She stared into the poor, thin frailty of the flames,

  not knowing what to say, or caring;

  only aware of him about her, scrabbling for seaweed –

  anything that might keep the fire alight.

  The one thing she noticed, as they descended

  and for a moment she raised her head –

  Alba, her mountains, appearing and disappearing

  out of the shadows of the mist.

  She crept into the bottom of the boat

  and wanted to sleep and could not.

  He made her drink water, fresh from the well

  and she thought how it had come from Ireland.

  She saw her sisters laughing on a hillside,

  and her head filled with colours and new light.

  All at once she realised that the sea had changed;

  she struggled up and looked at the low sun’s eye,

  glowing through cloud, as they passed a shore

  where rocks glinted and there were birds shining,

  slowly flapping on ahead and vanishing.

  She glanced up and he was watching her;

  she felt the tenderness of his eyes, and somehow

  the brokenness of her face smiled, and he nodded

  glad and exhausted.

  There was a creek where a river tumbled

  like the scampering of an otter into the sea.

  And he said nothing but brought in the boat;

  they clambered out and up, and the sun

  burned like a silver disc behind the mist.

  She called him and he went, waiting for her to speak

  and she said nothing but only took his hand.

  A place of hazel woods, of hills and dells,

  where birds flitted and wove, and the air felt sweet.

  This is a little kingdom, she said, and he thought

  how someone had been there before them, once upon a time.

  He said nothing but he knew for sure.