Of Mùthadh/Mutability

Robin Robinson

            (a protection spell)            

This book is for the taken: for all those feart of the glamour,

the skaith of the evil eye — weird-set, ill-minted

or only wildering — their bodies in motion, flowing

or full-flown, rapt with heart-hunger.

*

Grass twists up through my hair now

and my mouth is full of stones.

Tell my mother and father I am coming, tell them

I have not grown old.

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mùthadh: (Gaelic) change, mutability, metamorphosis; pronounced 'moo-huh'

glamour: magic, enchantment (cf. glamourie, gramarye, grimoire)

skaith: hurt, harm, damage

weird-set: fated, destined, cursed

ill-minted: malformed

wildering: going astray, bewildered, lost

flowing: unstable, changeable

heart-hunger: a longing for affection

The Shadow on the Stone

Thomas Hardy

     I went by the Druid stone

   That stands in the garden white and lone,

And I stopped and looked at the shifting shadows

   That at some moments there are thrown

   From the tree hard by with a rhythmic swing,

   And they shaped in my imagining

To the shade that a well-known head and shoulders

   Threw there when she was gardening.

     I thought her behind my back,

   Yea, her I long had learned to lack,

And I said: "I am sure you are standing behind me,

   Though how do you get into this old track?"

   And there was no sound but the fall of a leaf

   As a sad response; and to keep down grief

I would not turn my head to discover

   That there was nothing in my belief.

     Yet I wanted to look and see

   That nobody stood at the back of me;

But I thought once more: "Nay, I'll not unvision

   A shape which, somehow, there may be."

   So I went on softly from the glade,

   And left her behind me throwing her shade,

As she were indeed an apparition —

   My head unturned lest my dream should fade.

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