Friday's Grief Song, 5.26.23
A Clan's Motto
The North wind in places like the Outer Hebrides is powerful. The rock there is called “gneiss” said like “nice,” and it’s old. “The Lewisian gneisses represent the oldest rocks in Britain and date back to around 3000 million years ago. These rocks, which were mostly granite-like in origin, have experienced numerous upheavals in the Earth’s crust or ‘mountain building events’.”- Scottish Geology Trust
In this song, a rousing impassioned song by Scottish singer, Karine Polwart, she imagines (and how animistic of her) what the rock might have to say to one of its most troublesome offspring. A well known man by the name of Donald Trump, whose mother, Mary McCleod came from the village of Tong on the Isle of Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland.
Enjoy this powerful song. (Many thanks to Laurie Parker for sharing it with me).
Listen to I Burn, but I Am Not Consumed here.
I Burn but I Am Not Consumed
Written by: Karine Polwart
Album: Laws of Motion
Released: 2018
On May 11th, 1930, a young woman called Mary Anne MacLeod, from Tong on The Isle of Lewis, stepped aboard the RMS Transylvania from Glasgow to New York City, in search of a better life. There, she met Frederick, whose father had emigrated to America from Germany as a 16 year old boy.
And together, Mary Anne and Frederick raised five children.
Mary Anne’s middle son would return to Scotland years later, the home of his MacLeod ancestors, whose clan motto is: “I burn, but I am not consumed.” And here - in the name of progress and profit - and executive golf - he would pit himself against time and tide, and in his wake, the shifting dunes at Balmedie in Aberdeenshire would never be the same.
The marbled, metamorphic rock of Lewis is two-thirds the age of Earth - amongst the oldest on our planet. It knows about power, and it’s seen a lot. And so I wondered: what might it have to say about the Inauguration - tomorrow in Washington DC - of the 45th President of the United States of America - Mary Anne Macleod's middle son, Donald? And this is what the rock told me.
Oh son of Lewis, lonely boy,
hewn from granite, salt and sky
upon a foreign shore:
the ocean is a mirror gleam
in which you see yourself,
and nothing more.
Three billion years of gravity,
of strata forged in fire and earth,
the stone crib of your mother’s birth,
in which your forebears lie.
I am alive. I am a tomb.
I burn, but I am not consumed.
I burn, but I am not consumed.
Fish may swim at your command
across The Atlantic to the land
of dreams and self belief and boundless chance.
An exile tale. An immigrant dance.
You’re captain of a frigate now,
So set your compass, raise the mast,
Blow up the sails,
Erase the past, and future, if you must.
Together we can stand
and watch the peat-land turn to dust.
This is your apprenticeship:
The Gulf Stream doesn’t know your name,
nor does the splendid, blazing sun
that alters how the currents run.
The North wind never heard you roar:
You’re fired! You’re fired!
My back might burn, the blaze run wild,
but I am not consumed, my child.
The Minch whips up a spindrift storm.
The machair shifts. The machair moans.
From Uig Bay to Luskentyre,
the gale blows fast, the tide flows higher.
The shore erodes and disappears.
And, meantime, you are stoking fears
and stacking hope into a pyre.
You strike a match.
Oh ma bairn, mo leanaibh
Oh ma bairn, mo leanaibh
Your mother was a wee girl once,
who played upon my rocky shore.
And you, you are broken boy,
and you want more and more and more.
You build a tower. You build a wall,
You live in fear that they might fall.
You who see nothing but your own face
in the sheen of The Hudson River.
Oh ma bairn, mo leanaibh
Oh ma bairn, mo leanaibh
A balancing is yet to come,
although by then you may be gone
and leave a desert to your sons and daughters.
Still, these waters, they will rise,
the North Sea haar will cover your eyes,
despite your appetite for lies.
and your disregard for truth.
Three billion years of gravity,
of strata forged in fire and earth,
the stone crib of your mother’s birth,
in which your forebears lie.
I am alive. I am a tomb.
I burn, but I am not consumed.
I burn, but I am not consumed.
© 2017 Karine Polwart