Lead bull:-All that is life did come out of the tides
That follow the moon, as in hollowness yonder
It circles this world, and the wake of its coursing
Lays hold on the seas, draws them upward in surges
More strong than the sun can arouse from remote
ness—
The sun and the moon and this globe in a ring-dance Through measureless deeps and a spindrift of stars.
Old cows: Yes, they circle, they circle,
Like the memory held
Of a calf that has died
When its mother cannot
Bring herself to the weaning
And release it to swim
From her side into strangeness.
Young bulls: Heavy under heaven
Heaves the main in winter;
Warm are yet the wishes
Wakened by that rushing.
Summer also sees us
Seeking for each other.
Lustily may love go.
Laugh in your aliveness!”
Young cows: Be you the quickening light,
Be you the wind and the rain
Begetting billows,
We are the ocean and moon,
We are the tides that for aye
Renew your mother.
Calves: Brightness of salt scud,
Wings overhead, scales beneath,
Milk-white foam—new, new!
Old bulls: The seasons come and the seasons go, From the depths above to the depths below, And time will crumble our pride and grief As the waves wear even the hardest reef. We cruise where grazing is found far-flung And the orcas lurk to rip loose a tongue. Though we are they whom the waters bless, Our bones will sink into sunlessness. The race is old, but the world more so, And a day must come when the whales must go. The world forever cannot abide, But a day must come of the final tide. Old cows: Yet we have lived.
Young bulls: Yet we do live.
Calves: Yet we will live.
Young cows: Yet we make live.
Old bulls: It is enough.
Lead bull: Fare onward.
Through Pentland Firth go monstrous currents, and there are places where violence grows worse; one must pass by the Merry Men of Mey, and between the Swalchie and the Wells of Swona, and around the Bores of Duncansbay. Before daring these, the merman’s children found a lee on the Caithness coast, where they could mend their sea-weary kayaks and rest their sea-weary selves.
Cliffs stood ruddy on either side of an inlet which was hardly more than cleft in them. At its end was a strip of sand with a border of turf behind, boggy but soft. Thence a V -shaped slope led upward. A footpath wound through its boulders and sparse worts, but clear was to see that this site got few visitors, surely none in winter.
It was less cold here than might have been looked for, and to the travelers felt almost balmy after what they had known in the past weeks. Sunlight did not enter, so that the wavelets lapped dim silver in shadow; but reflections, of it off the strait which churned beyond gave some warmth to the cliffs, that glowed downward in turn. Winds were only a whistling past their heights. Tauno and Eyjan brought the kayaks above high-water mark. Over the turf they spread skins of seals newly taken. Blubber helped flint and steel start a fire in twigs gathered above, which kindled driftwood from below. Besides the flesh, they had an auk to roast and fish to eat raw.
“Ah,” said Tauno. “That smells good.”
“Yes, it does.” Eyjan stared at the spit she was handling, .where
she squatted. He clasped knees under chin and stared out at the firth.
“Enjoy this weather while it lasts,” he said after silence had extended itself between them. “It won’t for long.”
“No, it won’t.”
“Well, we needn’t linger over our repairs.”
“No. True.”
“After all, we are-what?-two-thirds of the way?”
“Maybe a bit more.”
Neither had anything else to say for a span. Eventide waned.
Eyjan poked the fowl with a bone skewer. As she hunched
forward, the unbound hair that she had dropped over her bosom swung away from white skin and rosy nipples. “This will soon be done,” she said. “You might begin cleaning the fish.”
“Yes.” Tauno jerked his glance to them and became busy.
Each movement sent a flow of muscles across him.