The Dove, the Book and the Black Bear (For Saint Columba of Iona)

Today’s poem recognises Saint Columba, the Irish missionary to Scotland about whom much has been said, many churches and schools named and to whom much praise has been, wrongly, given – wrongly because he was just a man. Still, there seems value in looking at aspects of his life and perhaps to take some warning from how he has been interpreted and appropriated in the 1500 years since he lived. Credit for the epigraph goes to Logismoi for providing the translation to an old Celtic poem about Columba.

The Dove, the Book and the Black Bear (For Saint Columba of Iona)

On the loud sea he cried to the King who rules thousands,

who rules the plain above cleared fields, kings and countries.

In the Trinity’s care he sought a ship—good his leaving—

on high with God, who always watched him, morning, evening.

(Beccán mac Luigdech, Tiugraind Beccáin, trans. Thomas Owen Clancy and Gilbert Márkus)

Though prayer, we’re told, consumed his mind,

And often he would go for days, for nights,

Without any food save the Word and prayer;

Though, so Saint Adomnán claims, an angel

In demeanour, blameless, pure-minded, chaste,

They say a violent war was waged

When he wrote Saint Finnian’s Psalter

Out by hand, and many died,

Fighting sword for pen to free

And to defend the Word he took;

And so he sailed to Scotland, set

To save as many as had died.

A noble penance, perhaps, and now

He is a saint of information which

Longs, they say, always to be free;

And in other tales he slew

Water beasts and calmed wild storms,

And delivered his isle, Iona,

From all hell and its demons;

At times a dove, others a bear.

Some say he knew such things as only

Can be counted by one who holds

Orion, Pleiades and the Bear

Numbered on his hands; and though

Hyperbole, we fly far from the point

To say such things of one who, at best,

Looked in awe at stars and knew

Himself too weak to know it all;

The true dove flees when we bow

Before one made, like us, of clay.

If we look for a dove, fighting with

The strength of a bear, quelling storms

And saving lands, look no further than

The words Columba stole, for he at best

Can but imitate what has already been said in full.