An dà shealladh

 

One-eyed winter, bent-backed hag, she

slopes across the shadowed corries,
harvesting the weak and wasted,

rinsing Alba with her wake.

 

I have seen her, outside in and
boiling through the mists of Mary’s

mildness, driving ice before her,

genesis beneath her feet.

 

Throw your words of he-said, he-said,

jealous black and whitely righteous,

onto fires of harvest’s ending,

Cailleach cannot see a cross.

 

Call the mists to veil the vistas
ancient under concrete scarring;
none may yoke her, land or lady:
she is threefold, she is one.