a loose-tongued schemer
But could draw you if not dead,
From her table and her bed.
How could you be fit to wive
With flesh and blood, being born to live
Where no one speaks of broken troth
For all have washed out of their eyes
Wind blown dirt of their memories
To improve their sight?

GHOST of CUCHULAIN

Your mouth, your mouth.

(Their lips approach but Cuchulain turns away as Emer speaks.)

EMER

If he may live I am content,
Content that he shall turn on me,
If but the dead will set him free
That I may speak with him at whiles,
Eyes that the cold moon or the harsh sea
Or what I know not's made indifferent.

GHOST of CUCHULAIN

What a wise silence has fallen in this dark!
I know you now in all your ignorance
Of all whereby a lover's quiet is rent.
What dread so great as that he should forget
The least chance sight or sound, or scratch or mark
On an old door, or frail bird heard and seen
In the incredible clear light love cast
All round about her some forlorn lost day?
That face, though fine enough, is a fool's face
And there's a folly in the deathless Sidhe
Beyond man's reach.

WOMAN of the SIDHE

I told you to forget
After my fashion; you would have none of it;
So now you may forget in a man's fashion.
There's an unbridled horse at the sea's edge.
Mount; it will carry you in an eye's wink
To where the King of Country-Under-Wave,
Old Mananan, nods above the board and moves
His chessmen in a dream. Demand your life
And come again on the unbridled horse.

GHOST of CUCHULAIN

Forgive me those rough words. How could you know
That man is held to those whom he has loved
By pain they gave, or pain that he has given,
Intricacies of pain.

WOMAN of the SIDHE

I am ashamed
That being of the deathless shades I chose
A man so knotted to impurity.

(The Ghost of Cuchulain goes out)

WOMAN of the SIDHE (to Figure of Cuchulain)

To you that have no living light, but dropped
From a last leprous crescent of the moon,
I owe it all.

FIGURE of CUCHULAIN

Because you have failed
I must forego your thanks, I that took pity
Upon your love and carried out your plan
To tangle all his life and make it nothing
That he might turn to you.

WOMAN of the SIDHE

Was it from pity