A Glass Darkly

by Donald Goodbrand Saunders

Two kinds of clarity (said the Bard)
attend me
and bring insight:
water clarity
and whisky clarity.

(He paused for effect but in truth
I was only half listening.
In declamatory mode the Bard
is well known to be full of it.)

Take water (he went on): simply
the lens of the present,
as in McDiarmid’s ‘glass of clear water’
held up to the light,
trembling imperceptibly
with the life of the moment.
Modest, self-effacing water
asks only to be seen through,
to be taken for granted.
Cistern and holy well,
faucet and font
dispense a purity that blesses
the blameless babe
and the designated driver.
Good water! And good water words are
‘limpid,’ ‘reflective,’ ‘uninflaming.’

Your whisky now
(he held up his glass)
is a prism of the possible,
a myriad golden futures
caught in an optic,
a brave spirit, wise with age,
a drowsing caged lion,
the sunlight
to water’s moonlight,
sol invictus – see its fiery heart
flashing cairngorm
from cut crystal facets!
We Gaels have it wrong, the water of life
is water. Whisky is life itself!

I’d heard enough.
Well (I said) what about
the stuff from Roddy’s still
(a jamjar of which
I know you have in your jacket
pocket) – three weeks old, innocent

of the cask and clear as a bell?
And what about
the horseback brown
Dochart in full spate
we can hear roaring
outside the pub?
Where are your two
clarities now?

The Bard did not reply
but the snoring
from the bowed head
deep in his collar
suggested he had achieved
neither.