The Green Witness and the Uncertain Gold
Enter thou alone—yea, solitary pilgrim of the greening hour, whose coming is neither proclaimed by trumpet nor writ in any earthly ledger, yet known, it may be, in the quiet registries of heaven.
No trumpet named thee. No clerk set down thy birth.
Yet on a dusk of March, when the last ash of winter smouldered
low along the world’s black grate, there came unto thee
a little bell-note out of the west, thin as a star in mist,
like some far-off chime borne upon the emerald breath of Éire herself,
and a hand unseen did turn the lock of Time.
Then wast thou borne, not by ship nor horse, but by remembrance—
that old kingfisher of eternity, whose wings flash blue
and are gone before a man can swear he saw them,
even as truth itself, swift and vanishing, yet leaving its mark upon the soul.
First didst thou stand upon a cold strand of Britain,
under a sky like beaten pewter. The sea bit hard.
The gulls went crying as souls that have forgot their road.
There stood Patrick, not yet saint but sorrow-marked,
halried from the shore by raiders out of Ireland—
Patrick, Roman-bred,
with gentle hands not made for bondage.
His name, like an ember in damp straw, had not yet kindled legend,
though beneath that ash did lie a fire destined to green the world.
He looked once backward toward his father’s house,
then forward into grief, and neither shore had pity.
Six years thou sawest Patrick upon the mountain’s shoulder,
a keeper of sheep among wet stones, bog-breath, and thorn.
The dawns were pale as unbaked bread;
the nights were iron; the wind was a thin priest
forever shriving the heather.
And there, where no man of comfort would willingly tarry,
his soul was hammered bright upon affliction’s anvil,
as clover unseen beneath the frost awaiteth its hour.
He kneeled among the sheepfold shadows and whispered,
not loudly, but as one laying kindling in a dark place,
“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”
The words were small against the hills,
yet the hills, methought, gave them room,
as though the land itself inclined its ear.
And thou, maiden-watcher of the turning years, didst perceive
that the heart cast down may yet become a lantern,
and that bondage, though cursed, may tutor a man
to hear the footfall of God where ease had made him deaf.
Then the lock turned.
Thou camest into a dream of roads.
The selfsame Patrick, escaped and weathered,
stood upon another shore with home behind him—
and before him the island that had once devoured his youth,
now clothed in that deep and fateful green
which would one day mantle the world in his remembrance.
No sword he bore. No banner of revenge.
Only a staff, a voice, and that strange courage
which returns to the wound not to reopen it,
but to heal where it was made.
Ireland lay before thee raw and green,
its plains breathing mist like sleeping cattle,
its oak-groves old with rumor,
its kings ringed by poets, harpers, law-speakers, and fire.
The torches in their halls shook gold upon shields;
the mead smelt sweet; hounds lifted sleek heads
from rushes sweetened with bruised herbs.
And Patrick moved through this many-kingdomed land
not as thunder doth, but as rain—
patient, entering by root and roof, by speech and sign.
Men say he used the shamrock to shadow forth mystery:
three in one, and one not broken by the three,
a humble green witness of divine wonder.
At Tara, in thy seeing, the dark before dawn
hung thick as velvet in a king’s unpardoning chamber.
Yet one taper held against the waste of night
made all the dark seem overproud.
Patrick spake unto chieftains who knew spear-law and clan-oath,
and his speech was not the speech of conquerors.
Rather it was a door set open in weather.
In his mouth forgiveness took a shape so grave
that vengeance seemed a child’s toy, gaudy and cracked.
And softly, as moss takes stone, there came another hidden word:
“Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.”
So didst thou, daughter of time’s long threshold, perceive
that power unruled by mercy rots in its own scabbard,
but mercy doth make of memory a bridge,
green and living across the broken places of men.
Then the lock turned.
Thou wert set amid the eighth century,
where monasteries rose like thought made stone.
The bells of dawn rang over fields silvered with rain.
There were scriptoria smelling of vellum, oak-gall ink, lamp smoke,
and the faint clean tang of scraped hide.
Outside, the high crosses climbed from the earth
as though prayer itself had learned the craft of chisels—
stone bibles under open weather,
their panels peopled with prophets, kings, beasts, and judgments.
The grass at their feet grew thick and holy-looking,
green as if the very soil rejoiced in what it bore.
A monk with fingers blue from cold and stain
bent over a page till noon and after.
He set one red knot, then one green spiral, then gold so delicate
it seemed trapped sunlight learning obedience.
He had no audience save God, the mice, and thee.
Yet in that hush did labour take on royalty.
No trumpet praised him. No marketplace knew his name.
Still he wrought as if heaven itself had a margin
waiting for his steadiness.
And under breath, like embers banked in ash, came this:
“Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.”
Then knewest thou, gentle bearer of the unseen years,
that devotion is not always in the blaze of martyrdom;
ofttimes it lives in excellent hidden work.
Then the lock turned again, and the ninth century opened
like a painted gospel.
Now sawest thou the Book of Kells in the becoming—
or in some dream neighboring its birth—
a wonder of Latin gospels wound about with beasts, vines, eyes, flames,
and such interlacings as make a man believe
eternity itself delights in pattern.
Each letter seemed a gate, each gate a garden,
each garden full of meanings that would not be herded.
The page shone like a bride’s veil seen through candle-smoke,
and the very silence around it had colour in’t,
green and gold entwined like memory and hope.
Yet beauty here was not vanity. Nay, it was resistance.
For the world beyond the walls was uncertain,
and the hand that paints a gospel fair
makes answer to the brute hand that would burn it.
One elder, stooping with years and grace alike,
touched the page and said no more than,
“Where there is no vision, the people perish.”
A plain sentence, yet it passed through thee like wine.
There learnedst thou, she who keepeth quiet watch,
that a people are not kept alive by bread alone,
but by memory, art, song, scripture, symbol—
the soul’s provisions against long winters.
Written by Marguerite Grace
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verse, possies, sonnets, and short stories 