.
And speaking to the western wind,
In the sped and turning time of the revolving sky
As a top unwinding like a dropped fable;
He dreams of taking leave, unraveling the coil
Upending his foil
Of listless sights as daylight creeps one more tread
And sweet belief breaks down once again:
Days that are ******* like a sad hunt
When the tracker is bent
On tragic orchestrations that only lead to a duel . . .
Undoing, Oh must it be, "Must we fit?"
Let us know and get on with it.
In his bed the women are only dreams
Phantoms, iridescent sirens.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Yes! I am not King Lir, nor could ever be;
Am a child cast out, transfigured, remote
Innocent, prey to the white flaming truth
The growing down, that clothes my name
Inconsequential, sheathed with shame,
Polite, capricious, calamitous;
Empty of all, it is unanimous
Nor even the memory of ripeness
Invisible, a drop in the pool.
I am weary . . . I am weary . . .
I shall whisper to the newborns when I am old.
Shall I build upon the strand? Have swordplay with the sea?
I shall tear my hair, mutter to the moon, bury my wounded knees
I have heard the Selkies singing, sailing with the breeze.
I do not think they will give their skin to me.
I have known them gliding beyond the ninth wave.
I still hear them sing so sweetly, weaving sorrows, on my back
Carving the blue waters as the waves are turning black.
We come and go in cycles with the moon, as tidal waves
Seep and seethe, foam and heave, lone captains setting sail,
In folly with a capsize brimming, before our boat has been bailed.
— after Eliot
.
Selkies (also spelled silkies, selchies; Irish/Scottish Gaelic: selchidh, Scots: selkie fowk) are mythological creatures found in Scottish, Irish, and Faroese folklore. Selkies are said to live as seals in the sea but shed their skin to become human on land. The legend is apparently most common in Orkney and Shetland and is very similar to those of swan maidens.
Female selkies are said to make excellent wives, but because their true home is the sea, they will often be seen gazing longingly at the ocean. Sometimes, a selkie maiden is taken as a wife by a human man and she has several children by him.
In Irish tradition there is the imramma, the sacred sea voyage that takes the wanderer on a soul-journey beyond the ninth wave to mysterious lands — islands of youth, of summer, of apples, of strange creatures and lovely women, and all the many shimmering dark-deep mysteries of the Otherworld.