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There, The Chapel Yew

THERE, THE CHAPEL YEW

Three nights now the clatter whisper
Ricochet words follow fade of breath.

A landscape sloped and skittered:
One old tree, small in its alloted bounds
Hunkered, curled tight about its heart.

Webbed taught, knotting stone to iron
Grown from bones, grown from bones.

Where all reach skywards and open
Wind, rain, cloud, jackdaw, hawk,
Where the wild, freed leaf flies,
Where it forgets itself
Where it can taste new names.

It will bend down, bend down low,
Not caring, delving to the smallest
A jewel of dust, the truest glimmer,
Wish to be nothing other than this:

A long vowel hummed, light in darkness,
Tongue spilled, an ejaculation this stringed
Taut, eloquent ivy, fearlessly veined
A clothing for the other, braced and measured.

It ripples blindly about its subject
Blinked and blinded, the brightest termination
An alluded something spaced hauntingly.

Resolutely peripheral, as all living things are wont.
Unbeknownst, uncontained, avoiding rigour
Vaguely rivered, an unassuming continence,
A this and a that and a wealth in shadows.

In sleep, only, can come communicated equivalence,
The monitors drowsed and edges blunt.
Something akin to a sleepy reaching love
A convolution wordless felt and melted
Inhabiting the same dream, a sometimes,
An always and forever, harboured together:
Ocean Mind waved and curled.

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Verse 11 continued

LLYM AWEL verse 11(part2)

So we pass it round and drink
It round, drink the short day,
Block out the storm, the raging heart,
The dying, trembling roads.

All narrowed, tunnelled in,
The golden liquid cools the breath.
Tunnelled in, proud thunder,
A slap of light, a daybreak.

The circle of the fire:
A harbour, a warm twilight.
We turn inward, away from the wall.
The wild fields of weather
The clatter of cold, the fall of night.

It runs in circles
It runs between dark and light
It runs, unacknowledged, between the company.
Cold are the dark paths to night.
Cold are the long, twisting ways.
No peace in the restless bending treetops.
No rest in the sparkling sky worlds.
Time runs screaming, piercing the light.
All dawns, a false dawn.
A cup never refilled,
Bright the days
That drip and scatter.
The fires gutter and chill.
Senseless and forgetful we sleep,
The few hours of dulled grey,
The storm that is coming.

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LLYM AWEL verse 11( part 1)

Eurtirn am corn, cirn am cluir;
Oer llyri, lluchedic auir;
Bir diwedit, blaen gvit gvir.

“Gold rims about the horn, the horn around the company;
Cold are the paths, full of lightning the sky;
Short is the evening, the tops of the trees are bent.”

Gold runs about its rim,
The horn is passed around the company.
Gold at the edges of the dark day,
Gold tasted on the tongue,
The tongue held silent.
Tangled are the paths and cold they are.

The circle of gold is eloquent but thin,
Shared, passed around, not owned by any.
The short round days.
Fire quenched and bent,
Should have been for the gods only-
As if we could have ever held lightning,
As if we could have gazed unblinking,
Unblinded by its sudden light.

It will burn all who yearn for it,
Burn them black and hollow.
Cold dust they will blow tree-high,
Forgotten, lost in name, one of many,
The bending boughs will mourn.

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Winter Song

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WINTER SONG

This distant raven
Smudges the fields,
A rise and spin and fall
Into waves of rain.

Storm winds sweep away
The last of daylight.
Broken sun skitters the hillsides.

It is a rage, a downing tumble.
The world aches
For good governance.
We, an evil race
If we can sing neither
Praise nor beauty.

The heather has broken,
Black is the wild rock.
Unkept are the fields,
Unkempt the hedges.

The cold phlegm lies deep,
A ghost not to be forgotten.
The neat roads are a lie:
They go nowhere
But another stone womb
Devoid and hollowed of life.

Arrogance barking
Through the night,
A papered-over civility
That masks
The purple bruises
Of pampered bullies.

The lambs of peace
Will bring down wrath,
The ravens know.
There is only hunger,
Food and eater.

Marrow,
The heart of things.
We gnaw the shattered bones
To find the fire.
Peck the eyes
To see tomorrow.

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LLYM AWEL verse 10 (part2)

3
Snow falls.
Mountains:
A white edge to the world.
Cold, immaculate heaven
Against clouds,
Storm dark.

4
Their distant gradient dusted,
Every dip delineated,
Each crest remarked.
Imperious white they rise,
Impervious to height,
Clearly distant.
Lines of light icing horizons.
Bright as cloud, accumulated,
Tumbled upwards, whip-walled,
A cold sigh, a sharp hawk
In diving dip: the cowering valley.

5
These slim masters of earth,
Pines roar as ocean waves
Unrigged, sail-stowed,
Or broken-topped.
Rolls, the folded swell of soil,
Solid, wind-rocked.
Wet, desert reaches unwalkable,
Unpathed lost fragments.
Summer days torn away.

6
They stand
Against storm
To no good purpose
But stubborn will.
These teetering mast-trees,
Tied to their harbour,
Unfit to roam.
Spearmen huddled in a forest,
Shorn of reason to stand firm,
Yet standing together still.

7
Ghosted flesh gnawed by cold to bone.
We stand tall not from choice- our bitter fate.
Sore is the storm: it seeps within without surcease.
Sliver, shard, we shiver still.
Holding fast – a downward slide.

—-

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The Long Rain, Grey

The long rain, grey,
Has dissolved a fragile distance.
With the wind, it comes and goes.
A silent room, a flutter of words.
A curl of incense, a bitter tea, warms and dries.
Perched above joy and sorrow
A ribbon road turns endless,
With only two steps,
Left and right.

A monk dips his quill.
He has become half-uncial.
A steady curve delights,
One syllable at a time.
A river of knowing
And forgetting.

Though the skin he writes upon
Is his own,
A compassed scratch,
A foliate curl,
Heroditas, Avicenna, Merlin.
A history of mirrors,
A rotated wheel.
A willowed sigh,
This river ink.

—-

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Llangammarch lies golden,
Autumn tumbled.

Moss grown green
On slated roof.
Slate skies
Silent with holding light.

Patted butter,
The maple leaves.
Bronzed, the curled oak,
Birch, a spattered copper.
The lank drip, the bloodied cherry.

Through its towers,
The river runs,
Light and cold.

A long distance opens up
Through wood and hedgerow.
We are laid, once more,
Naked and glorious
To the hills.

An easy folding land,
Smoke-blue
And tinged with
Sweet and bitter.

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LLYM AWEL verse 10

Ottid eiry, guin goror mynit;
Llum guit llog ar mor;
Meccid llvwyr llauer kyghor.

Snow falls, mountains are fringed in white;
These bleak trees: masts on the sea;
A coward has endless excuses.

1
Knowing what we know
What should be done?
We ask ( fearing the answer).

The cold clear cut,
The slow scribbled signature
Of snow.

Timber shattered,
The mast trees weep.
Stripped fingers
They have nothing to say.
The cry, long dry cry of winter.
Glass sea, glass sky,
Broken.

2
What is slight
Sustains us.
Rills and ridge
Croak under snow.

A laughter cough of ice.
Harsh is the wind on the edge of the valley.
No kind words for the hesitant.

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All the Waters

ALL THE WATERS

I cannot stay and I cannot go.
My heart melts like ice
On the high valleys in April
And I am given, melted to crow
And the cry of curlew.
Taken up and laid down:
All cool rain on the grasses
Of the rolling meadow,
A drift of cloud, a mist,
A risen vapour turning,
An Ascension to light,
A transfigured condensation.

All the waters of the world
Are one river.

By the bent and tangled hawthorn
We wait and wait long
For the return of blossom.
Yet we always are surprised-
The wealth of cream incense
Laid upon it, arching down,
The fragrant dew,
The hum of bees,
The expanse of growing summer.
The heart bursts open
To the horizon’s edge of light.
Warmed and belonging
A simple home
A simple return.

For all the waters of the world
Are one river.

And all the lost and drowned,
Flesh taught as dolls,
Roll now to and fro
In the breakers
On the tourist beaches.
Their last breath unheard,
Surrendered to the waters.
Their names and origins
In the thick, green weeds
Feeding tides and fishes,
Rolling, sightless, a little more,
Til they, dissolved in bubbles,
And rising now, meet the air they were refused
In the lands of milk and honey,
The brambled cliffs,
The stain of fallen fruit,
The rag-tag remains.
Bitter will be the tears, bitter and salt
As they ever are,
Dubbed with senseless poisons
And reasons and reasons why
And why not.

How long
before we learn
All the waters of the world
Are one river.

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Sorrow mountain

sorrow mountain

sorrow mountain
its dark weight
rain wet,
peopled with sunlight.

where purple cliff relents:
green heaped meadows,
hawthorn amid sheep.

such light is distant
a rolling soil
held down by boulders.

endless are the empty paths
upon its heaped up head.
pressed and rich as butter
the pastures bedded.

the silent road
a blink in daylight
lost around dusted corners.

we move on
silently from above
where the sky’s eye
waters a tragic blue.

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