XIV The Selling of a Soul

A poet struggling with the world’s condition,
prostitution of talents and the bondage
with which the bulk of men have been deceived,
I am not, I think, one who would say
that the selling of the soul would give respite.

But I did say to myself, and not once,
that I would sell my soul  for your love
if lie and surrender were needed.
I spoke this in haste without thinking
that it was black blasphemy and perversion.

Your forgiveness to me for the thought
that you were one who would take a poor creature
of a little weak base spirit
who could be sold, even for the graces
of your beautiful face and proud spirit.

Therefore, I will say again now,
that I would sell myy soul for your sake
twice, once for your beauty
and again for that grace
that you would  not take a sold and slavish spirit.

XXXVI

I should have sold my soul
without pricking of conscience for your sake:
because of your refusal I shall make of it steel
to split the rock of vicissitudes.

XXXVII

It is not the beauty of your body,
the beauty shaped in your face,
the beauty blinding my eyes
though it has gone beyond thought;
but the beauty of the spirit
that took form in your face,
the beauty of the spirit,
the heart-marrow of my love.

XXXVIII

I spoke about selling a soul
for your sake, o love:
blasphemy, blasphemy, ugly blasphemy,
a blasphemy of foolish rigmarole:
the soul sold for you would not become free,
the soul sold for your sake
would become enslaved.

XXXIX

As the slow embers of the fire
become a pure sparkling flame,
so my love for you
becomes a white adoration.

Sorley Maclean

My love for you has gone beyond poetry,
beyond imagination, beyond pride,
beyond love-talk, beyond hummed song,
beyond art, beyond laughter-music,
beyond joy, beyond loveliness,
beyond grief, beyond agony,
beyond reason, beyond nature,
beyond the great surging world.

Sorley Maclean

If our language has said that reason
is identical with love,
it is not speaking the truth.

When me eye lighted on your face
It did not show the reason in love,
I did not ask you about the third part.

When I heard your voice it did not make
This division in my flesh;
It did not the first time.

But that came to me without my knowing
and it tore the root of my being,
sweeping me within its drift.

With all I had of apprehension
I put up a shadow of a fight;
my reason struggled.

From the depths of this old wisdom
I spoke to my love:
you are not worthy of me, nor from me.

On the inside of my love,
my intellect on the elegant side,
and the foolish door was broken.

And my intellect said to my love:
duality is not for us;
we mingle in love

Sorley MacLean

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