Me Meaneth

I.

The calf lay meaning herself. 
What does that mean? The calf 
lay moaning in the pasture. As 

in a long-forgotten Scottish poet's lines 
the dictionary lets demonstrate 
one thing mean 

once meant: to moan, to lament—
The speaned lambs mene their mithers 
As they wimple ower the bent. 

I can't stop myself from muttering that, though you 
have no idea what I've said: 
what's speaned? what's mither? what's wimple? what's bent?

We could trace it if we wanted to: the dictionary's 
alphabetical, the words all lined 
up like children in a rush, 

blindfolded, to bash 
at a piñata. We could trace 
T. S. Cairncross himself, and his lost 

poem, and his lambs, the words that merge 
into his last name—a tomb, a mound of stones 
left as a memorial—

but what would that heap of memory-stones commemorate? 
The cairns lay along the crossroads. The calf lay meaning 
in the fields. The speaned lambs wimple as they mean. 

What's mither?—Mother. What's ower?—Over. What's bent? 
—A grass of a reedy or rush-like habit. 
But what's rush-like? What's a habit?

The lallation of rushes, over the slough. 
Scythe-pass after lamb-speane, and the sick 
calf meaning herself 

there, gnat-rush 
from her rheumed eyes 
with each slow blink. 

For speaned 
read weaned. Wimple's 
the cloth folds across the face 

in a nun's habit, or the analogous 
pleats and ripples on a body of water. 
The slough wind-wimples

as its gnats lift in wave on wave. 
If to wimple is to veil, or to be 
veiled (how can it be both?)—or to fall 

in folds, or 
(what Cairncross must have had 
in the folds of his mind) to walk 

unsteadily, shiftily, like the newborn 
lambs staggering after their mother, 
weaned too soon, mening 

for the withheld warmth of milk-spurt. 
So moan and mean burst 
from the same rush and word-thatch, the same 

bent bent. The weaned lambs 
moan for their mothers, 
we could say, 

as they stagger over dry grass. But I like the way 
Cairncross made the words 
wimple, the deep 

infolds and shadow-pools of them 
over the worried, half-concealed 
nun's-face of his scene. I'm still unspeaned 

from vowel, consonant-smear, milk-crust 
on hunger-mouth. 
Let the words mean wrong, in the mouthfeel of their moan.