Iona in Lacrimis
The saints are crying in the wind, can't you hear them?
Only the cries of the wing borne sing out,
oystercatcher, skylark, plover
and corncrake. This too may be an answer.
The saints are letting their tears fall, a gentle cascade
of green marble, don't you hear them clatter together?
Only the sound of the surf in the shingle,
and the grey stones clinging
to the beach in the rising tide. This too may be an answer.
Iona greenstone, shaped by wind and wave,
and left on the beach for our sins green greed, collect such
charms, and be saved... from fire and fear and shipwreck,
islands of safe purchase, may the marble and jade
and nephrite shed tears of the island go well with you,
St Columba's bright blessings fall on the beach, day
and night, slowing through the island's deep well of time.
About this poem
This poem was included in Best Scottish Poems 2023. Best Scottish Poems is an online publication, consisting of 20 poems chosen by a different editor each year, with comments by the editor and poets. It provides a personal overview of a year of Scottish poetry. The editor for 2023 was Aoife Lyall.
Editor’s Comments:
There is something exquisite in the opening line of this poem that never fails to catch in my throat as I read it: evocative and desperate, I want to know yet never hear the sound of saints “crying in the wind”. The questions “can’t you hear” and “don’t you hear” are as euphoric as they are transcendental, welcoming as they are keening, inviting as they are incredulous. Both questions are tempered by the same refrain “This too may be an answer”, as if to negate the scepticism the speaker may face in response to their ethereal relationship with nature. The historically religious significance of the island is not lost or denied here, but rather the reader is left to consider at what spiritual level they wish to engage with the island: do they hear the saints or skylarks? Or both, can it be both?
Author’s Comments:
I first visited Iona with my parents when I was seven and it has remained with me as the very picture of a perfect island. The second visit was forty-two years later and with islands on my mind for my new book with Boats Against the Current it felt right to introduce the island section with a poem about Iona. There were many drafts and strands of the piece; the greenstone, St Colomba, the particular birds you may find there and the sound sense of the place, the sea and the shingle, the clattering of stones, the ebb and flow of the sea, a call and response, a question and a not quite answer format, the mystery of an island existence, before paring down, distilling the experience and coming to rest with the final poem.
