Suibhal

by John Bolland

On Innse Gall…

The pilbroch needs lost time to make its harmonies
proceed from memory to anticipation
across the fragile bridge of one
particular configuration of eight digits
and a constant pressure on the bag.
 

Nine tones and four phrases.
He locks the pattern into memory like spin-cells
evolving from experience - DNA transcripted
amidst trial and error – heuristics and tradition.

Grace-notes and doublings, tachums and birls
encrust like beardy mussels, trail like kelp-
reminiscences slowing the steady tread of the Urlar,
the steady progress of lament celebrating
present absence

and coming absence present just the same
until the chanter’s broken and the drones
proscribed  – the tongue’s forbidden :
headstones mumble in the mist like puirt a beul.