Time, the deer, is in Hallaig Wood

There’s a board nailed across the window 
I looked through to see the west 
And my love is a birch forever 
By Hallaig Stream, at her tryst

Between Inver and Milk Hollow, 
somewhere around Baile-chuirn, 
A flickering birch, a hazel, 
A trim, straight sapling rowan.

In Screapadal, where my people 
Hail from, the seed and breed 
Of Hector Mor and Norman 
By the banks of the stream are a wood.

To-night the pine-cocks crowing 
On Cnoc an Ra, there above, 
And the trees standing tall in moonlight - 
They are not the wood I love.

I will wait for the birches to move, 
The wood to come up past the cairn 
Until it has veiled the mountain 
Down from Beinn na Lice in shade.

If it doesn’t, I’ll go to Hallaig, 
To the sabbath of the dead, 
Down to where each departed 
Generation has gathered.

Hallaig is where they survive, 
All the MacLeans and MacLeads 
Who were there in the time of Mac Gille Chaluim: 
The dead have been seen alive,

The men at their length on the grass 
At the gable of every house, 
The girls a wood of birch trees 
Standing tall, with their heads bowed.

Between The Leac and Fearns 
The road is plush with moss 
And the girls in a noiseless procession 
Going to Clachan as always

And coming boack from Clachan 
And Suisnish, their land of the living, 
Still lightsome and unheartbroken, 
Their stories only beginning.

From Fearns Burn to the raised beach 
Showing clear in the shrouded hills 
There are only girls congregating, 
Endlessly walking along

Back through the gloaming to Hallaig 
Through the vivid speechless air, 
Pouring down the steep slopes, 
Their laughter misting my ear

And their beauty a glaze on my heart. 
Then as the kyles go dim 
And the sun sets behind Dun Cana 
Love’s loaded gun will take aim.

It will bring down the lightheaded deer 
As he sniffs the grass round the wallsteads 
And his eye will freeze: while I live, 
His blood won’t be traced in the woods.

Sorley MacLean, translated by Seamus Heaney