Song for Dying ...and let us finally enter, friends, the being of every live thing at its moment of most joy: deer on savannah knowing she will soon outleap her tiger; goose on the tried track from Greenland knowing his strength gather, plying his leader to yield place; bee in her hive's forecourt knowing it falls to her to dance the requisite dance; with cub, whelp, calf, colt, chick at their trying play - also the lives of our gifted kind at their moments of most attaining: of the runner who runs all running forgot, as she were an eye flying; of the speaker whose words are as the words of another heard in the brain; of the singer whose song is as the song of another sung down to him; and of all who utter things of beauty freely as they were a babe's laughter - yet never forgetting the grace lighting on those whose best endowment was welcoming of graces: child's first dandelion; or far out by Foula breath of Papa's blossoms piloting her folk home to her; or that other as of all blossoms, startling monks on Iona, lifting the load, spiriting the step, that was Columba's soul of mercy, mindful of their labours, cheering them.
Let us enter all such, willing that, for the days of earth, until the red noons of her bloated sun, and beyond those also, wherever a hatch swings open in the heavens and the impossibility that is life blows through, in all manner of life whatsoever that shall take sustenance of it, the life we now lay by be for an inheritance of innocent joy.
Fishermen from Papa Stour in the Shetlands were guided home from as far out to sea as Foula by the scent of flowers on their island, and the prayers of Columba on their behalf reached his monks on the far side of Iona as a scent compounded of all blossoms while they made their way home exhausted by their day's labours.
William Imray first published this piece in Pennine Platform in July 1990.He is a classicist, musician and a Reader in the Scottish Episcopal ChurcH.
First published in Pennine Platform, July 1990.