In their dark pilgrimage, silent

They sailed the seething sapphire sea

Breathing from the salt-infused sky

Inhaling the sheets of ghostly fog

Their boats battered by bellowing winds

Granite waves spitting on their hands

Then suddenly close by their ears

Warm whispers in Ler's greeting

Wherefore they produced the infallible iron

And beat him off with strokes of holy ferus

There, isolated with their thorn-crownèd lord

They observed the outline of an island

The first grey monks landed on my shore

Their fingers abraded as they dragged their boats

Onto the rough sand, and took their book and supplies

Over green hills and valleys of shaded sadness

And trekked fearfully into the lush dark wilderness

And through brambles that twisted like warring wyrms

They crossed streams where sheaves of wavelets

Pulsed the riverbank and wading birds probed the silt

And when the hawk plunged and the rabbit screamed

They shivered and clutched their book and crossed necks

They glimpsed smoke one day, rising through the fog

They followed the hope of people and a distant heat

How could they have not known, that in a place as wild as this, the people would be equally feral?

At some time they had been aware because they brought the book: the desire to civilize

We fed them and drank them into the evening

And when they fell asleep about the embers

We killed them all

We carved them apart and then tied them

To the trees of the Ailm and Beith and Eadha

And then went to shore and burned their vessels

We sang and chanted to the Dagda

And the sparks leapt from the fire

And illuminated the bodies in the forest

And we felt his presence in our throats

And we willed him to protect Éireann

And ward off the new people

But the grey monks still came

Some welcomed them, some killed them

But they came all the same and soon

Words turned to violence and words

Filled our heads and our hands were

Bound by the words of the book

Gradually, the past left the island

The Old Gods diminished and died

The púca and aes sídhe crept away

And the spirits of the forest and flood

Were evicted, but the book would stay

Here until this day and beyond it

He regrets the arrival of the grey monks on our green shores

And their silent book that became loud and angry

And has not left us since

But who could fight their dark pilgrimage?

It was somehow in the mind all along

And it chased the faeries away