The Cathach 2011 - Volume II (PDF) - Sligo Libraries

Argyle’s Stone
Around his neck Argyle wore a stone:
green marble from the strand at Iona
where Columcille and his banished tribesmen
landed after bloody Cooldrevny claimed
three thousand lives in 561 AD.
“To every cow its calf; to books their copy!” –
that civil notion begat the savagery.
His ruminations on such histories
put him in mind of how most mortals kept
committing the same sin over and over
like calving cows or Psalter manuscripts –
each a version of the original.
Among his pendant stone’s known properties:
general healing, protection from fire,
shipwreck, miscarriage and other dire
possibilities that might imperil
a pilgrim of Argyle’s appetites.
Foremost among the sin-eater’s lapses
were hunger, which was constant, and then thirst,
and all known iterations of desire –
craving and coveting, lusting and glut:
whatever was was never quite enough.
So, for ballast among such gravities,
Argyle wore the stone for anchorage.
- Thomas Lynch
38