☀ Today's Poem: "Under Beinn Ruidhainn" Robin Robertson

Three moons in the sky
the night they found him
drowned in Sawtan's Bog;
just his cap, sitting there
and his wee fat hands poking out.

It was no loss to the village,
I told them next morning,
and the villagers agreed.
Horn-daft, he was,
havering and glaikit
and scaring the children.

I mind that time
he picked up a mouse and ate it, quick,
in two mouthfuls;
set the tail aside
on the ground
like a cocktail stick.

I used her well, after that,
his Jennie,
stiff in her widow's weeds,
jilping into her
whenever I could,
in the barn or the boat-house
or off in the fields.
She slipped two or three out at least,
and sank each one in a lobster creel.

Her head was away
by the end, as mad as her man
and no good to me.
She sleeps now
under Beinn Ruadhainn, her face
covered in ivy,
scab, and sticky-willow.

Then the dreams came.
Last night: the burning loch,
so full of bairns
they bobbed to the surface
with their hair on fire;
black snow; rain
like razorblades;
the foosty-faced man,
there at every corner,
hands furred with grey-mould.
And her, as always,
star-naked, hatching
in the herring-nets.
The last I remember was my body
being driven with sticks through the town
to Sawtan's Brae, and hanged.

I broke from sleep and sat up in the dark.
I groped around for the matches
and the matches were put in my hand.

Notes:

Beinn Ruadhainn: (Gaelic) 'summit of the red place'; pronounced 'ben roo-ah-in'; 'Ruadhainn' anglicised as 'Ruthven', pronounced 'Riven'
horn-daft: quite mad;
havering: babbling, speaking nonsense
glaikit: vacant, idiotic
jilping: spurting, spilling
foosty: mouldy, gone bad