Thoughts On The Witches Of Scotland Tartan Poem by Denis Mair

(thanks to Adam Saunderson for posting this tartan along with an explanation--- see the note below*)
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The lag time of the commemorative impulse makes the black of the tartan eerie,

as if persistence of memory were the itch of an old wound, the pang of a belatedly remembered disappearance.

These are wounds of communal self-harm due to harm inflicted on sensitive souls.

To feel this grief would require closeness to a community where such wounds are carried internally.

But so many communities have mingled. They have harmed their own sensitive souls in so many ways,

and there have been so many overlays of harm done...

In the welter of griefs caused by fanaticism, it seems you would need a tuning device

to home in on any particular grief you wanted to memorialize.

You'd have to make your own mind into a radio.** You'd have to see the tartan's lines as signal bands:

red for the frequency of blood crying out,
grey for confusion that let bad things happen, ***
white for purity of soul that deserves to be remembered.

While gazing at this tartan, your eye may even detect a shimmer of another color:

as if the land were telling you--- those souls are there with it, forever green.

Then in your perusals of history, intuition would turn the pages;

then chapters on certain atrocities would light up for you.
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Notes:
{* The Scottish Register of Tartans has approved the new design by The Witches of Scotland. This design was created to memorialise those who suffered as a result of The Witchcraft Act 1563 to 1736 in Scotland. This tartan will be woven to make products to help create a 'living memorial'.}

{** For some reason this brings up thoughts of Nico Vassilakis' poem 'A Name for Radio'}

{*** How uncanny! While gazing at this tartan, my eye detected a subtle fleeting greenness that skipped across the grey bands. I think this is a trick of the eye that other people may experience as well, a color illusion due to displacement of red's retinal inverse onto the gray bands. The retinal inverse of red is cyan, a mixture of green and blue. The displacement may occur due to the proximity of black and white bands. Although an optical phenomenon, it struck me as uncanny. Gazing at the tartan made me wonder how one can 'tune in' to the suffering of those unquiet souls. How can one lay them to rest? Just as I was wondering about it, my eye caught a subtle ripple of green. It was as if the land were expressing itself in that phantom color: 'Yes, all that happened across my surface, but those souls will be with me--- forever green.'}