Catalogue
rivermouth of the man-servant
house of the councillor
ridge road by the forest’s edge
the abbot’s land.
the dark stream and the winding river
dipped between the domed land
sprinkled with enclosures of saints,
tonsured walls on green tumped hilltops.
the washpool, wolf’s leap, devil’s staircase.
thr whistling ghosts of drovers and the
warm breath panting of their dogs.
stories of cobbled streets and a wild language
far away.
with gold of many kinds,
they return to the long silence here
and the starlit grazing
of sheep at peace.
simonhlilly 
interesting title, as the poem turns out to be a catalogue of the places and people in the area. but the poem is anything but a boring list. just an aside, but it’s so interesting to me how often the devil gets credit for interesting features in landscape. i have hiked down the grand canyon on a “devil’s staircase” as well. the devil obviously gets around. so many good lines here, but “warm breath panting of their dogs” took me right there with the drovers.
I suppose the landscape stories are way before Christianity, so all remembered mythical beings and events are ‘works of the Devil’. Quite a few steep climbs are named ‘Jacob’s Ladder’, but that doesn’t effectively describe the effort of ascending a winding, vertiginous road to nowhere!, and they tend to be in more inhabited places – can’t have the Divvel for a neighbour, it will effect house prices!
i love that picture. it speaks beautifully. thanks x
Thanks, Sally. It’s the road north through the Upper Abergwesyn Valley, taken late Spring this year.