ON the third day from this (Saint Brendan said)
I will be where no wind that filled a sail
Has ever been, and it blew high or low:
For from this home-creek, from this body’s close
I shall put forth: make ready, you, to go
With what remains to Cluan Hy-many,
For there my resurrection I’d have be.
But you will know how hard they’ll strive to hold
This body o’ me, and hold it for the place
Where I was bred, they say, and born and reared.
For they would have my resurrection here,
So that my sanctity might be matter shared
By every mother’s child the tribeland polled
Who lived and died and mixed into the mould.
So you will have to use all canniness
To bring this body to its burial
When in your hands I leave what goes in clay;
The wagon that our goods are carried in
Have it yoked up between the night and day,
And when the breath is from my body gone,
Bear body out, the wagon lay it on;
And cover it with gear that’s taken hence
‘The goods of Brendan is what’s here,’ you’ll say
To those who’ll halt you; they will pass you then:
Tinkers and tailors, soldiers, farmers, smiths,
You’ll leave beside their doors all those thwart men
For whom my virtue was a legacy
That they would profit in, each a degree
As though it were indeed some chalice, staff,
Crozier, or casket, that they might come to,
And show to those who chanced upon the way,
And have, not knowing how the work was done
In scrolls and figures and m bright inlay:
Whence came the gold and silver that they prize,
The blue enamels and the turquoises!
I, Brendan, had a name came from the sea
I was the first who sailed the outer mam,
And past all forelands and all fastnesses!
I passed the voiceless anchorites, their isles,
Saw the ice-palaces upon the seas,
Mentioned Christ’s name to men cut off from men,
Heard the whales snort, and saw the Kraken!
And on a wide-branched, green, and glistening tree
Beheld the birds that had been angels erst:
Between the earth and heaven ’twas theirs to wing:
Fallen from High they were, but they had still
Music of Heaven’s Court: I heard them smg:
Even now that island of the unbeached coast
I see, and hear the white, resplendent host!
For this they’d have my burial in this place,
Their hillside, and my resurrection be
Out of the mould that they with me would share.
But I have chosen Cluan for my ground
A happy place! Some grace came to me there:
And you, as you go towards it, to men say,
Should any ask you on that long highway:
‘Brendan is here, who had great saints for friends:
Ita, who reared him on a mother’s knee,
Enda, who from his fastness blessed his sail:
Then Brighid, she who had the flaming heart,
And Colum-cille, prime of all the Gael;
Gildas of Britain, wisest child of light.’
And saying this, drive through the falling night.
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