Francis McGreechin is a poet based in Glasgow who travels and works in Europe. His poetry has been published in the New River Press Yearbook 2019.
In Christian folklore, it is said that the mythical garden of Eden lies somewhere at the source of the river Nile. The birth place of Adam. But there is another little known creation myth. That man was first born on an island off the west coast of Scotland. That Adam crawled out of the sea. Nurtured and protected as a child by the populating seals that would inhabit the island shores. A blind, mute hermaphrodite... the first Adam.The origins of this mythical island is no longer known, but is said to be submerged somewhere in the Celtic seas, between Scotland and Ireland.
The Black Isle
I am
a black isle
wild stone
blind tide obsidian
I am
black pearl
darkness of no division
a sackcloth moon
I am
light stunned rocks
Gull torn
mute cry of heaven
White swell
grey granite sea
sounds the distance
I am of
no country
I
bright worm sprung from mud
Eyeless
unvoiced... breath
that yawns the infant cry.
and all the stones that did not speak
an androgynous face in unformed darkness
I am
a black isle.
...............
out of stillness...
breath.
In the dust shell evening fade of silence
mewling suckle
gropes
dumb air
flesh winds crack/
frozen needle blast/
oblique eye zones
bone
bleeding
Mother breast of sea
...he ate of darkness and sleepless song of space
Untouched by the frameless void with only the surf of the ocean and the cradling bark of the
waves milking the dark space of the infinite
Adam lay down to rest
... and death had no name
O lethe drops
On wings of white sleep ....enter Uriel,
a bright spirit
and uttered the celestial language of God
in which he named all things to Adam.
Awake…
and ye shall know the secret meaning and truth of all things
For I am thy messenger Uriel
of him that sent down the fire from the heavens
and flung ye up from the hollow dust
And from thine eyes I cast thee out O shade
and free thy feeble tongue from mewling sup
From the infernal bawl of darkness I raise thee
and call to thee
...Adam
Adam stood before the dawn of time
immaculate upon the pristine shore.
Uriel spoke...
And to every thing of high and low estate
I give to thee a name
And all that is of light, shall shineth in the day
And all that is coveted and hidden, shall remain of what is dark
And all that is mean and foul shall crawl upon the earth
and blush in the face of his righteous truth
And Adam saw in the brilliance of the light, a golden orb
womb the heavens, illuminate every
shape and shade of the earth
Amorphous kelp looms the craggy shore...
like an after birth placenta
Priapic granite thrusts, erotogenic
through the pregnant sway of rolling mist
Muscle mollusc and shell...tenacious
cleave the stones, a motley cornucopia thickens
Snipe nipping the larva on the backward tide
Murmurs the sea in ancient light
Swerving the clouds, an Albatros swoons from the heights
his grey shadow tipping the white foam of the waves
A Leviathan, crescent humped, swells the deep
Fawns leap, in a dance with the blown leaves, on pastures green
And in the far of the distance... Adam saw the vanishing white peaks
of seven holy mountains
Nine Angels flaming in the towering heavens
A vernal moon rise up mysterious, in the night sky
He saw the boundless unnumbered stars in the firmament
wash there face in the slow breath of a restless tide
And time moved like a fleeting ocean dream
In the days of Adam
Exile
From the drift of the deep
he would hear the mournful cry of the
siren call from the sea
And in a vision he saw the naked branches of a tree
drip with blood under the sickle moon
And Adam was estranged from the creatures of the earth
He felt the dark wolf of loneliness surge up and
immerse his body, his heart crushed with
dreadful black pity
He met the image of himself walking upon the shore
...and saw that he was naked
and felt ashamed
In the saline garden
...he wept.
In dark days of long repose
Adam would dwell upon his fall
The white pearl tears of the Moon Goddess
in opposition to Apollo, pale on the
broken mirror of the sea
A Storm Petrel shrill cracks the heavens
as he stood upon an invisible shore
His thoughts stretched out across the
unbroken arc of the infinite
And he was set between two winds
East and the West
Two worlds in opposition
Man divided against himself
Adam's dream...
I knew not of death... and death knew me not
...and yet I must know his face
Lilith...
I cannot reach you...
across the cinders
of time…
the serpent light echoes
meta incognita
wild grey eyes of the granite sea
doom cracked world
black swell of light
language is a vortex of death
the wynde came over the cliffs
rayne and hayle drowned the lungs of the sky
stars glimmer in the infinite void
and giants walked upon the earth
stone upon stone
leaf upon leaf... in opposition
a foot print in the sand
a broken christ on the shore
O lost...
unknown limit...
leaf of bright water blood tide
blind moon
the carcass of an Ox stripping the wind
dreams withered on the blossom of the cherry tree
the stone suffering silence
broken wings of the world
I am a black isle.
After Eden
Out of that desolation we where born (Edwin Muir) Scotland 1941
We touched it...
Something brighter than ourselves
pierced through a hand
Here where the wind began
and is now
Beyond the broken stones of the shore
dissolved in the infinite.
We touched it... once
in an instant
Its dew wet eye already leaving
before it began to speak
Ebbing in the tide
birth of ruin on a bare bone cross
A pellucid passage through the gates of Eden
Our souls dumb as new born children
Indifferent to its voice
The Drunken Forest
I too have passed through the gate
Where stars fell like flames from the trees
Where Jacob wrestled with the Angel
Hands cupped in thorn betrayal
And like the drugged beast
I too ... have wandered lost in a drunken forest at night
Comments