The Caiplie Caves Read online

  CONTENTS

  Preface

  “In this foggy, dispute-ridden landscape”

  I

  The North

  Sauchope Links Caravan Park

  Crail Autumn

  A Plenitude

  NO 59981 05825; 56.24324° N, 2.64731° W

  Having abandoned his mission . . .

  Efforts are made to dissuade him . . .

  Evidence of his own cult in Pictland . . .

  “Ethernan” likely derived from the Latin . . .

  The Desert Fathers

  “When Solitude Was a Problem, I Had No Solitude”

  Tentsmuir Forest

  A Miscalculation

  The Spies

  Mercenaries Know There’s Always Room for Specialists in the Market

  The Meridian

  Whose Deaths Were Recorded Officially as Casualties of “The Battle of May Island”

  Song

  II

  NO 59981 05825; 56.24324° N, 2.64731° W

  He remembers a friend . . .

  Like Cormac Ua Liatháin, he sought . . .

  Hostilities were inevitable among the four peoples . . .

  Now blood on his lip . . .

  Tomorrow, for sure, he will make a start . . .

  A vision . . .

  He reexamines his practice . . .

  A visitation . . .

  He enquires of the silence . . .

  An Enthusiast

  From The Invertebrate Fauna of The Firth of Forth, Part 2, 1881

  The Shags, Whose Conservation Status Is “of Least Concern”

  “Goodbye to Cockenzie Power Station, a Cathedral to Coal”

  A Trawlerman

  She Is Buried on the West Braes

  White Strangers

  Origin Story

  Kentigern and the Robin

  To the Extent a Tradition Can Be Said to Be Developed; It Is More Accurate to Say It Can Be Clothed in Different Forms

  An Unexpected Encounter With He Who Has Been Left Alone To His Perils

  A Retreat

  Song

  III

  Song

  A Lesson

  The Intercessors

  Crail Spring

  The Sharing Economy

  Time Away with the Error

  Two Chapters on Ancient Stones

  Ancient Remedies with Contemporary Applications Currently in Development

  56.1833° N, 2.5667° W

  The Isle of May lies just outside the western boundary . . .

  Its paved road, which has all the appearance . . .

  Having once dwelt at Caiplie, “place of horses” . . .

  In a purposeful adoption of an ancient burial site . . .

  You Can’t Go Back

  Stinging Nettle Appreciation

  The Hermits

  Clarity

  Notes

  Acknowledgements

  For Michael, Linda, Beth, and Stan

  PREFACE

  ACKNOWLEDGED AS A site of pilgrimage from antiquity, the Caiplie Caves, on the coast of Scotland’s East Neuk of Fife, are most consistently associated with the hermit Ethernan. The village and church of Kilrenny, which means “church of Ethernan,” are not far away, overlooking the sea. But despite the distribution of Ethernan’s name on carved stones and in dedications, where he appears in the accounts he is often sketched only briefly, in passing. Upon returning from study in Ireland, he may have become the first bishop of Rathin in Buchan. Sometimes conflated with Adrian of May, murdered with his fellow monks during a Viking raid on May Island in 875, Ethernan is also supposed to have been the “Itarnan” who “died amongst the Picts” in 669, as entered in the Annals of Ulster. Though some sources imagine him travelling the Great Glen from Iona to Fife in the 640s, or the popular route from Iona east towards Lindisfarne, his link with Iona cannot be confirmed. A number suggest he was an Irish missionary to Scotland who withdrew to the Caves in the mid-7th century in order to decide whether to commit to a hermit’s solitude or establish a priory on May Island. This choice, between life as a “contemplative” or as an “active,” was not an unusual one to take up among his cohort.

  Inconsistencies are not surprising. What is surprising is Ethernan’s poverty of supernatural accomplishments. Fantastic tales of early medieval saints, hermits and martyrs in Britain — their feats of strength, endurance, and clairvoyance, their animal associates, meteorological interventions, and divinely assisted acts of revenge — are enthusiastic and plentiful. Ethernan, meanwhile, is said to have survived for a very long time on bread and water.

  Ethernan’s story still wanders outside the archive, resists a final resting place in the ever-expanding facility of the past. And neither are the Caves the past. As John Berger writes, “The past is not for living in,” and the Caves — known locally as the Coves — are very much lived in. Unlike Fillan’s Cave in Pittenweem, no interpretive or preservational infrastructure attends them; there is no key to be acquired at a nearby café. Nor is there even a commemorative plaque, such as the one marking Constantine’s Cave north on the Coastal Path below the Balcomie Links golf club. People still build fires in the caves at Caiplie, drink, and camp there. Alongside crosses carved over centuries, they record their own symbols and advice, political statements, declarations of uncertainty and love.

  It is reason and wisdom which take away cares, not places affording wide views over the sea.

  — Horace, Epistles I, vi, 25–26

  in this foggy, dispute-ridden landscape

  thus begins my apprenticeship to cowardice

  no leeks sprang where I walked

  no stags bore beams for my house

  neither am I that type of acute person who leads others into battle

  or inspires love

  all creatures are in exile, says Augustine, but my defeats feel more literal

  and fault-based

  will my fulfilment be the fulfilment of an error?

  an error at the foundation of my life, an error burning in its stove

  and this fear to which, as to a bureaucracy

  I am repeatedly referred

  it is a weak place to meet oneself

  grassed roof, dirt for a bed

  I don’t need to tell you what I thought

  I

  THE NORTH

  Where should we find consolation,

  dwelling in the north? Amid the stunted

  desperate plant life clinging

  to its edges, thriving on atmospheric

  vengeance or neglect? Of two moods,

  fragile and invasive, it gazes out to sea

  as its character bends inland.

  And why defend our poignant attempts

  at agriculture, the gall

  of our entrepreneurs? The defining

  mid-winter pageants performed

  in a somnolent rage? The leisure class

  commends the virtues of hard work

  above all else, and we labour under

  frost-cramped statutes, the black

  letters of legislation, in hog-reek

  and land-driven slag, middle-aged

  from birth and, given our devotion

  to slandering this place, illogically

  xenophobic. We could as soon move

  south as rise above it. Are sympathies

  inseparable from what one does

  to stay alive? What is a self

  but that which fights the cold?

  SAUCHOPE LINKS CARAVAN PARK

  Gulls up at dawn with swords and shields,

  if dawn only in low season, in the week

  we can afford. My love, who negotiated with a Silk Cut

  in his wheel hand the unfamiliar roundabout

  t
o the A915 at Kirkcaldy, sweeps droppings

  from the paved deck like an owner, with his whole heart.

  He grew old not thinking about himself.

  So it follows our vacation home is not ours, but let

  by the company on certain conditions, for certain uses

  pertaining to a quiet enjoyment of sea views

  beyond the lower lots, signed-for with the understanding

  our initiative shall likewise be applied

  at the company’s discretion.

  The dogs we don’t have must be leashed, our wireless

  fee charged daily. Here is the rent reminding

  tenants they don’t own, interest confirming

  for the borrower to whom the principal belongs.

  Here is the insurance to tell us we’re not

  safe, and here is the loophole which allows it

  to not pay. The week he’s scraped together is now his.

  My old man, who raises his spirit like a lamp,

  collects Stella cans tossed from the raceway

  down the hill overwritten with gorse and cow parsley;

  and who, discovering the bulb beside the door

  burnt out, will, cursing happily, replace it with the spare

  I laughed at him for stowing in the glove box.

  CRAIL AUTUMN

  In a stone village on a stone coast

  I tried to convince the storage heaters

  to take our relationship to the next level,

  spend some of what they’d put away

  on me, the rented flat, its walls

  three feet thick, stone, and 200 years

  older than Canada. What I was

  doing there was not to be confused

  with doing something. But neither was it

  nothing, exactly, and felt necessary,

  though hardly a necessity, and so settled

  the soot of the subjective over

  everything. Objects of my attention

  made more of me. The sedimentary shore

  broke, like the day, into simple shapes,

  which are the most difficult

  to explain. In daylight I’d walk, unless

  it rained, then hit the Co-op at 4,

  before the working people. Suppers were

  less simple than negligent, and under

  the duvet I’d ruined with ink, the evening’s

  plan turned to Ativan. Panel shows.

  A PLENITUDE

  Appearing as though they originate in spiritual rather

  than material seed, as proof

  we don’t know how to properly celebrate

  or mourn — bindweed and ox-eye daisy, cranesbill, harebell,

  hare’s-foot clover, whose ideology is fragrant

  and sticky, the underside of reflection blooming

  across centuries. Arguments for and against belief

  volunteering in equal profusion.

  My many regrets have become the great passion of my life.

  One may also grow fond of what there isn’t

  much of. Grass of Parnassus —

  and when you finally find it, it’s just okay.

  But look for lies and you will see them everywhere

  like the melancholy thistle, erect spineless herb

  of the sunflower family. That the eradication of desire

  promotes peace and lengthens life

  is time-honoured counsel. Still, you can’t simply wait until

  you feel like it. The beauty of the campions,

  bladder and sea, the tough little sea rocket,

  is their effort in spite of, I want to say, everything

  though they know nothing of what we mean

  when we say everything; it is a sentiment referring only

  to itself. Purple toadflax, common mouse ear,

  orchids, trefoils, buttercup, self-heal,

  the Adoxa moschatellina it’s too late in the year for,

  I can hardly stand to look at them.

  And all identified after the fact

  but for the banks of wild roses, the poppies you loved

  parked like an ambulance by the barley field.

  NO 59981 05825; 56.24324° N, 2.64731° W

  Landward, the cave mouth conspicuously dark.

  Halfway between Anstruther and Crail,

  singular in the vicinity. Prominent

  calcareous sandstone outcrop on a raised beach

  level, short lengths of passage

  and as spectacularly weathered as the coexistence

  of good and evil, the earth pigments.

  Anchor in five metres, taking care to avoid

  the numerous creel markers. At half-tide

  a dinghy may be hauled out where the reef buffers

  flat rocks, though they are sharp

  and landing delicate, if land you must.

  Wind may complicate return to the boat. Any visit

  is a lesson in how quickly conditions change.

  Having abandoned his mission,

  Ethernan finds the Fife coast

  crowded with solitaries

  terrible to see, worse to be anywhere near, these vagrants

  in search of a hermitage

  men and women, mostly men

  in rags overworn with larger rags

  no one on whom to practice themselves

  poisoned by their personalities, speaking pain

  without opening the mouth

  like vegetable life, but less reliable, huddled in the light

  of the blind upstairs, and those are not the lingering odours of Paradise

  yet they do seem free from a townie fear

  of unfit, unkind, unmarked places, the undistracted measure

  my fellow peregrini in self-exile, the form

  of ascetic renunciation most available to Irishmen

  Efforts are made to dissuade him

  from his retreat

  dress codes, character disorders

  abecedarian hymns of praise

  laws

  he who does not cut his hair in the Roman manner, must

  she who leaves hers uncovered, must not

  no consort with pagans, no believing in vampires

  no changing your mind, no wandering

  can a person be trusted whose principles forbid despair?

  I spot the cleric from a distance by his wide sleeves

  his minor build’s angle of progress

  he looks like someone who sleeps for pleasure

  that iron bell a tiresome associate, a bit much

  and I will soon be in earshot of his sentences

  which exude an ugliness arising in nature

  as a mix of banality and abundance

  Evidence of his own cult in Pictland exists

  in the distribution of carved stones

  bearing his name

  I can’t be sure now there ever was humility in it

  burning the self as though it were a city

  believing the past might be destroyed

  and remade

  we Companions of God appeared, even to ourselves

  to experience our visions as actual contests

  confronting dragons as did the Child Jesus

  conversing with the irritable waters of the Albus Fons

  improving on Servanus’ arguments with the devil while striding broad tracts of land

  in satisfaction and in duty to the people

  to whom we offered evidence of those who lived and died

  contrary to nature’s precedents

  those blessed by the artifacts claimed special talents

  certainly, they seemed to get a lot more done

  but the veneration of relics became a trade in relics eventually suggesting

  our dear saints possessed, in addition to divine attributes

  more than the usual number of working parts

  to whom belonged all the blood-soaked cloth?

  the surfeit of St. Pancras? />
  corpses piled up until the whole world was a tomb

  death lost its autonomy, strange to say, it sickened

  the boundary between place and no-place

  no longer firm

  it reduced our ability to think metaphorically

  we believed the things we said because we said them

  and as my colleagues grew incapable

  of speaking off-brand, in the middle voice

  the temper of my own voice drained away

  “Ethernan” likely derived

  from the Latin “aeternus,”

  or “eternal”

  until, finally, all was noise

  rage and shame of creatures domesticated by brutality

  uncanny beings mechanized under the influence

  of austerity’s single truth

  and the amphetamine of perpetual conflict

  in a region of caves with a hermit in each like worms in cabbages

  a vacancy

  deep, vibrant compartments, chimney announced by a draft

  that spat on the back of my neck

  silence its content, its disposition, and generative

  as language is generative

  no one word reigns

  I was shy, as we are before the original and self-evident

  it immediately duplicated itself inside me, more than can be used in a lifetime

  my first fire ingling in the recesses, I saw the scars

  from its many tenants

  THE DESERT FATHERS

  With or without a bindle of crystal meth

  they made their anchorage in Egypt’s

  Wadi El Natrun, or the dismantled

  Marine Corps training base of Slab City, California,

  hard skills in transition, taking losses

  and burning, if not with a sensible fire,

  in the pride of specialized knowledge.

  Snakeman relocates the red diamond rattlesnake

  and northern Mojave rattlesnake

  from residents’ trailers to his own to live

  alongside him with the scorpions and guard dogs;

  it’s tough to have riches and not love them.

  St. Anthony sold his land, gave the money to

  the poor, yet in his Outer Mountain sanctuary cried

  I desire peace, but these bad thoughts