HISTORY. . .HAPPENS.
It is 11.32
in 1132 and - now.
A sunset sets fire
to Kildare
burns it to the ground.
Night takes the town
in its arms.
Memory sets fire to time.
I, a mind invisible
( divisible by all )
move through the pages
of history
slip silently through
the ages
an unobserved
observer.
The ghost I've
yet to be.
The latitude of now
the longitude of then
the ****** flux
of history.
Voices scattered throughout time
( spoken in a 16th century accent )
whisper to me
greedily
wanting to be
remembered.
". . .the successor of Brigit
was betrayed
carried off...put into a man's bed
forced to submit to him."
"I hear you..!" I say
". . .I hear you!
". . .seven score killed
in Cill Dara...most of it burnt..!
The Chronicles tell
the tattered tale.
The voices once again
lost in the wind.
Diarmud Mac Murrough's
violence on Kildare
happens all over
again and again
written upon the wind.
The **** of the abbess
destroying the divinity
of her authority
her harmony.
A woman baptises
her new born
with milk
as in the old way.
The fires of her age
flickering across her frightened face.
Brigit born anew.
Time tamed
comes to my side
licks my hand
like some mythical hound.
"Take me back..."
I command
". . .to my own now!"
"Now!"
I cry.
Out of the Silken Thomas
one two and three inebriated
merrymakers sway and spill
out into the Christmas of I984.
One big one small and one very very tall
together they sing
informing the yet-to-be
of what is lost and past.
"Rejoyce!" the snow says:
"...snow falling faintly through the universe
and falling faintly...upon the living and the dead."
I tell the night
that is already passing into
the great beyond.
"Remember O Thou Man
Oh Thou Man, oh Thou Man.
Remember, O Thou Man
Thy time is spent.
Remember, O Thou Man
How thou camest to me then
And I did what I can
therefore re. . ."
Walking through Kildare one passes through all the history still hanging in the air...once one has heard the voices of those who have passed before us...it is impossible not to hear them ever again...the air is stained with the history of their times and the soul cannot but soak up all that has happened.
Brighid reappears in various guises in various times and seems part historic, part mythic, part Christian, part pagan. One of her dualities is that she is herself but also an incarnate representative of Mary.
She is the protectress of dairymaids and is associated with February lambing day (one of the four primary Gaelic holy days, Imbolc, meaning "bag of cream" or "butter-womb"). She was born herself by manifesting from a bucket of milk being carried out the door by her mother, a milkmaid. And the Irish Catholic Church, before it came under the aegis of the Roman Catholic Church, baptised in milk rather than water. My Auntie Nelly used to put the sign of the cross on the flanks of our cows by dipping her fingers in the milk.
As the first abbess of Kildare ( Church of the Oak ****-dara ) she was followed by an unbroken line of abbesses who commanded great respect from the people and were responsible through the saint’s order for maintaining by precise ritualistic means a continuous fire ignited by St. Brighid before her death in ca. 522. The abbesses were assisted in this by 19 nuns. With the sack of Kildare the fire of centuries was finally snuffed out.
The **** of the Abbess of Kildare in 1132 destroyed her sanctity and rendering her unfit for her office. MacMurrough imposed in her place a kinswoman of his own.
Her **** paved the way for the Norman occupation of Ireland.
James Joyce was intensely proud of being born on February 02, lambing day, that is on Imbolc, which by the old reckoning shares the claim for being St. Bridgid's Day along with February. The Celtic day was measured in a lunar manner like the extant Semitic calendars so that a calendar day begins at sunset, not midnight). Joyce considered St. Brighid to be his muse and liked to have his works first issued on February 02 to honour her.
She is invoked in all post-Chamber Music work. As St. Bride Brighid continues to maintain her abbey, now a "finishing establishment" for the "The Floras . . . a month's bunch of pretty maidens." She is Maria in "Clay," the moocow in Portrait, the old milk woman in Ulysses, the maid in Exiles, the broken branch in "Tilly," (one means allowed to stoke the sacred fire at Kildare was to wave air over it with a branch), and a thousand references to milk and things bovine in FW.
The Norman-Anglo Conquest of Ireland began in 1169, when a mercenary invasion force from Norman-occupied Wales captured Wexford and Waterford. A year later they took Dublin, and over the next century, 75% of Ireland would fall. Dermot MacMurrough's wily reign of deceit, beginning in 1132, paved the way for the Norman occupation
