NEW YEAR’S DAY
When there is nothing good to say
Then silence is better.
It is a calm day today,
Small rain in a dark sky.
Above the quiet valleys,
A high wind from the west is roaring.
The last day on Earth will be like this:
Resting in its own beauty,
All known, nothing named.
All reasons self-extinguished.
Watched over, cherished, belonging.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged consciousness, landscape, New Year's day, Poetry, rain, time, Wales, Winter | Leave a Comment »
CHRISTMAS NIGHT, CHRISTMAS MORNING
The moon strides through mist.
He is one: half-dead, half-reborn.
The garden is all jet and water –
The black shadow that is time and space.
There is no truth here but stories,
Is what we learn if we live long enough.
The river in its shroud, past the silent graveyard.
Nothing for you to do but weep and sing,
Says the sighing pines.
Nothing but to find beauty here and sing it,
Says the sighing pines.
And the stars look down in envy.
They would fold their wings and walk
These muddy, leaf-strewn paths.
They would feel the cold air of morning,
Let go of hope and fear,
Sing with sun and sparrows.
Would build their small fires,
Feast on emptiness and fullness.
Eternity weaving clothes for itself.
–
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged ancestors, Christmas, eternity, existence, landscape, landscape photography, moon, Poetry, time, time and space, Winter | 3 Comments »
HEART
Heart anchored to this land.
No need for more questions.
The slow breath of seasons.
An Ivy road that clings and wanders
About the steep sides of Mynydd Troed.
This voiceless white sky calls
Into a vast unknown.
Three days stand still:
The cold of motionless time.
Take it to heart.
Let the silence of it
Dwell there a while.
–
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged nature, Poetry, time, Winter, winter solstice | Leave a Comment »
A lot of my writing this year has been towards an art/word project inspired by The Black Book of Carmarthen, a small, handwritten manuscript containing poems collected over a lifetime by one person. It is the oldest known manuscript written in the Welsh language. A mixture of ancient bardic poems and prayers, it is at once mundane and transcendent, simple and utterly baffling. The words that come to me are either reflecting some of the imagery or subjects of the fifty odd pieces, or dwell on the nature of the author and the continuity of language and writing. The art works I am making mainly combine parts of the manuscript pages overlain with my own woodblock prints from decades ago. There will, probably, be a book that combines text with image. It is in no way a translation of the original text. It is one artist’s reflections of the magical mirror and timelessness of ancient books.
MER KERTEV KEIN (Black Book)
(The marrow of fine songs)
It is a river
Uncurling in caves,
A white torrent on dark slick rocks.
It is a shoreline cave where mystery is born by echoes,
Far from comfort, where opposites couple in the roaring of it.
Spanning centuries each word tumbles combining elements.
Shadow worlds are dressed in time to shatter and rebuild the fragments.
Oh, speckle-breasted thrush,
Thrice the song to sing.
Morning rain.
Rain of morning.
Dawn storm.
Eternal song.
A river where meaning slips like fishes,
A flash, a flank, and gone.
The next ripple, the next wave, the scintillating light.
Umbral echoes.
It dances from sound to sound.
A juggler slipping from stone to stone
In the midstream rush. Where next? Where next?
And the foaming roar of it:
The world dancing elements and prophecy
And the arc of words cast up and caught, too fast for the eye.
A stream, a stream, of passion itself.
Sound clothed in the names of things,
The naked, naked sound.
A river of God’s being,
A bowstring caught and released,
The mouth’s harp
And its breath drum rhythm song.
—
There are spirits here
There are ghosts
Where I see these landscapes,
Familiar, sunlit, wild
I have never been.
I am haunted by the names
And by the meanings
Within the meanings I know.
Other pages in other hands:
Mirrored, pushing through.
I am become a palimpsest of prayer-
The angels with clawed feet
Offering golden torcs.
—
A language of waves,
Of echoing empty hills.
My eyes water the seeds of words,
Grow vast forests.
The dance of sounds:
Lost timeless for a while,
We dance and dance.
The memories are not ours
That lodge in our hearts.
My soul fragments to the four quarters
As though I am already buried.
There is a cold wind from the north.
A woman who is not a woman
Moves at the edges of my sight
Whispering rhymes with berry-stained fingertips.
One of Three and Three in One.
Before Eden we quake.
The Tower was too high,
The Tree was too bright.
The Flaming Sword
That drove us outwards
We stole for shovels and mattocks.
—
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged ancestors, art, awen, bardic, Bardic rant, consciousness, memory, metaphysics, myth, Philosophy, photography, Poetry, printmaking, song, Taliesin, THe Black Book of Carmarthen, the numinous, time, tradition, Wales, Welsh language | 5 Comments »
HARD RAIN
Hard rain washing the world away.
Leaves fall through cooling air.
The gutters are singing an autumn song.
Rivers wake from summer’s sleep.
I was dreaming of eagles and their turquoise voice
In the days where darkness drums down more suddenly
And the cold cannot any longer be shrugged off.
I was dreaming of a path that was a spiral
And a spiral that was a mirror.
I stand before a silent oak.
Its name is eternal song,
Retribution, its door.
Its mouth is darkness.
In the end we do not know what matters.
This curl of sound, this exhalation of breath
Might be enough for a universe to be complete.
I study the taste of this turquoise,
Turn it between cold fingers
Then walk into the hill ( for all hills are doorways).
If you follow the hare, the path shall lie
Flat as grass before a strong wind.
If you follow the deer, the path shall be
Dappled and filled with birdsong.
If you follow the otter, the path will be
Silver and smooth as moonlight.
If you follow the dead,
Returning to their places,
You shall find your path
To womb and fireside
And questions: why and whereto.
All the warm singing halls
Lost in mist and blood.
All the familiar is a lie.
The world is utter strangeness
And the stars, known but unnamed.
I have been a trowel, an eagle, a pen.
What has been put together, falls apart.
These dreams you do not own.
Each is borrowed to keep you warm.
The path is a name you do not know.
This world is all the clue you will get.
Wrapped and unwrapped, each day a reminder.
There is no greater fool than a poet,
No greater truth than the lie of poetry.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged art, Autumn, Bardic rant, consciousness, landscape, landscape photography, nature, Otherworlds, Poetry, rain, the numinous, this world, time, Wales | 3 Comments »
TREE OF PROPHECY
He is a collector of voices.
Here is a collection of voices.
Rhythms of breathed sound,
A sealed moment, the dead
Still living here, whispering.
On the edge of a void uncrossable,
A wriggling wall of prophecy.
Membranes of prayer,
Shading itself, a tented haunting.
A tree shaken bare by unbearable noise
Re-inhabited by a million singing souls,
( the birds of dawn and endless, endless sunsets).
One will come roaring, one will come.
Black words will fly out,
A challenge of why and how and by what right.
Trespassing and lost, though strangely mirroring.
Ashes endlessly rekindled, the taste of starlight.
Swept away, though locked to anchored word,
A world here and gone, the apparel of eternity.
We clothe the tunes of emptiness
And seek to learn the reasons why.
The sun has passed, the birds are singing.
The storm is coming, a dark cloud through the long wood.
These clear-eyed beautiful boys
Riding their jeeps, cradling their holy guns.
They have won, whether they live or die.
Certain and blessed, spilling seed and blood.
It is the way it has always been:
The bitter tongue and languid hand,
The sharp old men whispering reasons
Goading on righteous atrocity,
And the doe-eyed compliance of their girls.
Unshakable promises, the beauty
Of the certainty of a righteous death.
The will of gods ploughing the land,
Burying the bones again and again.
Warriors of the shattered dawn.
Blood feeding the roots again.
Eternal fire, eternal hunger.
Spent shells of glory,
Again, again, again.
—
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WAR CRY
A furnace dawn.
It will come on
To rain tears later.
Why are we always
Led by fools?
.
It is not gold, but spelter.
Not ore, but slag.
The forge of beauty is cold.
The taste of the morning air
Is bitter.
.
Two swans, white and dancing,
Fly low following the river westwards.
A sorrowful sky full of rain
Will cause more leaves to fall.
.
All our roads are cracked and failing.
They have borne too much,
Never thanked nor mended.
We watch weeds grow tall in crevices.
.
Within the hills
The druids and saints
Are turned to stone.
The names of things carved and fading
Where sheep are grazing.
.
There will be peace at last
When we are all gone.
First frosts will kill
The last rose.
.
The gods of creation
Sought perfection
And so always failed.
They have taught us sorrow,
The fleeting smile of time
And space.
–
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged ancestors, art, Autumn, bardic, lament, landscape, Poetry, rain, seasons, time, Wales | Leave a Comment »
The sky rolls out from them, these hills
that witness all that moves round here.
Catching the last light in shadowed hands;
Sending breezes billowing through the rolling valley oaks.
They drop their white veils and dream of prophecies
That do not end in utter silence.
Their answer is in streams and tumbled stones
That last almost forever, almost.
And catch and keep the hearts of small and nested things,
To keep them safe until it is time to take them back to night
And to that other dreaming.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Mynyddoedd Cambrian Mountains, nature, Poetry, Wales | Leave a Comment »
CYMRU, IF I NAME THEM
If I name them shall I make them mine,
Those hills that rise and fall in cloudy distances?
Shall I take them into my folded self,
Safe memorised and belonged?
Will they, then, wake enough
To acknowledge this time’s short passage,
Allow a fleeting sun-warmed moment of life
To be counted and valued?
Is there then enough silence in them
To quench the rabble tides of complaint?
Enough sobriety and bliss to dismiss
The well-worn excuses of failure and exile?
We are eagles weeping in the crowns of eternal oaks,
Waiting for the one who made us thus,
To come and set us free, to give us,
One last time, our form and status,
To let us die loved in our own place.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged awareness, belonging, blame, landscape, Mabinogion, Poetry, Wales | Leave a Comment »
RAGNAROK: OUR PLACES BOOKED
Such a perfect still sky, cloudless.
Radiating heat to infinity,
Darkening by the second,
A touch of pink on hill and tree.
Yesterday another piece of heaven fell to earth.
We have news that our betters create
A new constellation of stars,
A new heaven of beneficent watchers,
Angels of rare metal to stand by our heads,
To stand by our feet,
To cover us with their wings,
To watch over us without cease.
The wars go on.
They are boring wars, small wars,
No heroes, no grand victories.
A death of cities, a death of nations.
The death of women and children,
The death of hope, the death of goodness.
We will be safe, though.
Our leaders have said.
They spend their time
Nesting these notions,
Thinking for the future, they say.
While bits of heaven fall to earth
And small things die of cold in the late frosts,
And there is so little, so little
That changes,
Millennia after millennia.
—
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged cycles of time, delusion of freedom, myth of the warriors, Poetry, politicians, same old, time | Leave a Comment »
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