these old poets:
smoke blue hills,
smoke blue clouds.
they rise up so,
they reveal themselves
and are curiously hidden,
conversing with vapour
between worlds
unmeasured, unfathomable.
they loom, nonetheless,
and shape the world.
it is from there
the clear waters fall,
from fell and moor
to feed, to wash clear our eyes,
to fill with song untranslateable,
echoing down the spine,
deeper than eye and brain,
deeper than soul,
into the bowels,
into annwfn,
the dark mysterious,
fecund deep.
rolling, these storm fast vowels,
ancestral to the blood.
this they prove:
there are no new songs.
just old songs
with new words,
old songs
with new tunes.
—
wonderful metaphors comparing old poets to “smoke blue hills,/ smoke blue clouds.” who would have thought? i wonder how you came by this inspiration.
Thank you. i have been doing a bit of study on some old Welsh texts. They often suggest parallel worlds and have layers of suggested meaning. They are as numinous and ever present as the hills I see from my windows..,