HALF LIGHT

HALF LIGHT

HALF LIGHT

The broad way and the narrow, you see, in
                             Upper
                    Paleozoic shale, the argument having

come to this. If one side—call it mine—sets
                             forth
                    the virtues of method and rich

supply and, not so incidentally, of Rome and all
                             its heirs,
                    the other—countermine—shows

what a pickaxe and shovel can do with
                             only the
                    sound of the enemy’s digging to

guide them. Vernacular testament, tables 
                             of stone. And
                    here where the two converge and as

a consequence where many died the
                             siege
                    returned to stalemate. I shall never

think of undermine as merely of the mind
                             again.



                    Because the man would not keep

still, would preach against the errors of the
                             church in
                    Leith, in Montrose, wherever abatement

of the plague allowed. And furthermore
                             taught
                    New Testament Greek. Was burned

at the stake on the first of March in 1546, you
                             may stand
                    on the spot: unparalleled

view of northern coastline, sea, more rock.
                             The Cardinal
                    said to have watched from the window where later

(“a butcher”) his body was hung. So two
                             to begin with: one
                    in flames, the other unburied for seven

months, two versions of the one idea. Wishart’s
                             friends, “the first
                    reformed congregation in Scotland,” held

the castle for nearly a year, their countermine
                             having saved
                    the walls. The sea? Quite faithless. Would not

take sides. Indifferent to bombardment as to
                             filth
                    from the privies of righteousness, which

emptied on the cliffs below. The English
                             reinforcements so
                    long looked-for (this will not

surprise you) did not come.



                             You’ve got
                    to be ready, my gardener said just moments

before his sod cutter severed the cable line.
                             Referring not
                    to lines so easily spliced but to his brother’s

death at fifty, thus his own (“the family
                             heart”).
                    Nor did he mean this loveliness is lost

on him: I’ve seen him with the lilies and
                             the weeping
                    larch. And look, he’ll say. The motion

that begins among the crowns of oak and maple well
                             before it turns
                    to weather on the ground, he means, whereas

I’m lost unless the front has warranted
                             some mention
                    on the morning news. So second or third

hand, much as I’ve always lived on the earth. The
                             difference
                    is not nature—my gardener loves

his new machines—but something more elusive
                             yet, some
                    lightness of touch that by a common

paradox bespeaks the firmer grasp.
                             George
                    Wishart in St. Andrews would approve.



I think he would. The lurid
                             light
                    of martyrdom was always in this sense

an aberration, like the mounting of cannon atop
                             a church. The
                    church in question (1546 again) has

largely gone to grass and bare foundation stone,
                             the choir
                    and transepts unimpeded green. Which leaves

the quarrel where exactly? If the wall
                             that held
                    a window (fallen churches turn to open

excavations for the enterprising urban poor)
                             has been removed
                    to bolster up a cowshed here, a roadwork further

west of town, in what sense can the window
                             still be said
                    to govern point of view? Nostalgia? Backward

longing not so much for death-by-proxy as
                             for that
                    which makes the dying incidental. Hence

our beggarly rapture at stark divides: the cliffs
                             on one side, North
                    Sea on the other, and the mutilated
 
body (there is nothing quite so good at this)
                             for scale.