At Roane Head

Monday 25th Jan 2010
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'At Roane Head', from The Wrecking Light, is the second in a series of narrative poems I've been writing over the past year - all of them set in fictional Scottish locations. They have some of the attributes of folk tales, and some of folklore's familiar, cheery themes: murder, rape, revenge, madness, physical deformity, witchcraft and the supernatural.

In this poem I've invoked the Celtic myth of the selkie: creatures that swim as seals but which can become human by shedding their skins. The transformation is reversed by climbing back into the sealskin, but if the magical skin is lost, or stolen, the creature is doomed to remain in human form. Ròn - pronounced roane - is the Gaelic for 'seal'.

Although crusted in Scottish blood and sea-salt, this poem found its way into the world one afternoon over Christmas in a rented boat-house on the Norfolk Broads.

At Roane Head 

for John Burnside

You'd know her house by the drawn blinds - 
by the cormorants pitched on the boundary wall, 
the black crosses of their wings hung out to dry. 
You'd tell it by the quicken and the pine that hid it 
from the sea and from the brief light of the sun,
and by Aonghas the collie, lying at the door
where he died: a rack of bones like a sprung trap. 

A fork of barnacle geese came over, with that slow 
squeak of rusty saws. The bitter sea's complaining pull 
and roll; a whicker of pigeons, lifting in the wood.

She'd had four sons, I knew that well enough, 
and each one wrong. All born blind, they say, 
slack-jawed and simple, web-footed, 
rickety as sticks. Beautiful faces, I'm told, 
though blank as air. 

Someone saw them once, outside, hirpling 
down to the shore, chittering like rats, 
and said they were fine swimmers, 
but I would have guessed at that.

Her husband left her: said
they couldn't be his, they were more 
fish than human, 
said they were beglamoured,
and searched their skin for the showing marks.

For years she tended each difficult flame: 
their tight, flickering bodies. 
Each night she closed 
the scales of their eyes to smoor the fire.

Until he came again, 
that last time, 
thick with drink, saying 
he'd had enough of this,
all this witchery, 
and made them stand 
in a row by their beds, 
twitching. Their hands 
flapped; herring-eyes 
rolled in their heads. 
He went along the line 
relaxing them 
one after another 
with a small knife.

It's said she goes out every night to lay 
blankets on the graves to keep them warm. 
It would put the heart across you, all that grief.

There was an otter worrying in the leaves, a heron 
loping slow over the water when I came 
at scraich of day, back to her door.

She'd hung four stones in a necklace, wore 
four rings on the hand that led me past the room 
with four small candles burning 
which she called 'the room of rain'. 
Milky smoke poured up from the grate 
like a waterfall in reverse 
and she said my name 
and it was the only thing
and the last thing that she said.

She gave me a skylark's egg in a bed of frost; 
gave me twists of my four sons' hair; gave me 
her husband's head in a wooden box.
Then she gave me the sealskin, and I put it on.

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Marion Clarke
Marion Clarke posted a comment
Friday 30th Jul 2010 03:33
Wow - this is brilliant! I loved the image of the dog's bones still lying where he died like a trap. The woman's grief is tangible. The ending came as a real surprise but the mention of a sealskin did make me start to wonder about that celtic myth. I was so glad the husband's headed ended up in a box!
 
eheeley
eheeley posted a comment
Thursday 24th Feb 2011 09:36
I have been "beglamoured" by this poem. The imagery is so strong and the emotion engendered is overpowering. The simplicity of the language is beautiful. I want to paint this poem. I am off to buy all Robertson'spoems.
 
moontreeman
moontreeman posted a comment
Monday 6th Jun 2011 07:42
On Roane Head

Beglamoured as I was with Roane Head,
I gave a copy to my daughter.
Adding notes to aid with quicken, hirpling and smoor;
a resume of selkies,
and a small photo of a cormorant en croix.

I knew she'd love it as I did:
that timeless place of mystery and myth,
the perfect story of life and death,
love and loss, suffering and vengeance;
yet only 60 lines
from it's cinematic opening
through an embered hearth of darkness
to the final twist.

Next day I saw the stapled sheets uncreased
and asked if she had tried it.
'No, ...not yet' she said,
feigning forgetfulness.

Later she did read it
dutifully,
while watching a recorded X-Factor
for the second time.
And said nothing.

I thought she'd love it as I did:
instantly, completely.
And now I ask myself:
Did I do this?
 

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