Trigger Warning

The witch was as old as the mulberry tree
She lived in the house of a hundred clocks
She sold storms and sorrows and calmed the sea
And she kept her life in a box.
The tree was the oldest that I’d ever seen
Its trunk flowed like liquid. It dripped with age.
But every September its fruit stained the green
As scarlet as harlots, as red as my rage.
The clocks whispered time which they caught in their gears
They crept and they chattered, they chimed and they chewed.
She fed them on minutes. The old ones ate years.
She feared and she loved them, her wild clocky brood.
She sold me a storm when my anger was strong
And my hate filled the world with volcanoes and laughter
I watched as the lightnings and wind sang their song
And my madness was swallowed by what happened after.
She sold me three sorrows all wrapped in a cloth.
The first one I gave to my enemy’s child.
The second my woman made into a broth.
The third waits unused, for we reconciled.
She sold calm seas to the mariners’ wives
Bound the winds with silk cords so the storms could be tied there,
The women at home lived much happier lives
Till their husbands returned, and their patience be tried there.
The witch hid her life in a box made of dirt,
As big as a fist and as dark as a heart
There was nothing but time there and silence and hurt
While the witch watched the waves with her pain and her art.
(But he never came back. He never came back . . .)
The witch was as old as the mulberry tree
She lived in the house of a hundred clocks
She sold storms and sorrows and calmed the sea
And she kept her life in a box.

In Relig Odhráin