September 1, 2015 by simonhlilly
In The Beginning..
Words bent to prayer
And bent to slaughter
(A willow woven, hazel bent
Sturdy, slight vessel folded to itself).
Sounds imprisoned
And sounds emboldened,
The revolution of meanings.
Howling words that bite bone,
Whistle through rock, a melting wind.
Gaseous, methane bubbles rising,
Of things rotted down, forgot,
Recycling weightless vapour
From a deepest mind of mud.
Not mine, not thine,
Suckled in time and savoured
For the very sound of themselves.
They will neither be hunted nor chivied.
They may be shorn, dyed even,
But remain stubborn, feeding only
On the green thin skin of the earth.
Herd and flock, making mock
Of each desire to eloquence,
They will (most likely) only settle
Where silence is, when attention
Is elsewhere, in wasted moments
Where careless scattered seed is overlooked.
These words wash up on longer waves,
Rolled together out of reach,
Worn and riddled, broken shells,
Tumbled, tide-swelled
Moon-pulled
Meaning.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged editing, language, meaning, Poetry, word hunting, words | Leave a Comment »
September 1, 2015 by simonhlilly
Twilight now
no certain edge
no end nor beginning of it,
an inperceptible slide.
Colours smudge,
blood turns black
(its bitter colour)
lost in peeled shadow.
All ruins stir-
a swung memory,
tacit rhythm,
mumbled sight pitter-patters.
A moth wing trepidation
vibrating mica dust,
dew singed,
a collapse in certainty.
A heavenly moment
of relapse.
cascading inconsequence.
silent dice tumbled,
bounce and settle.
—
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged art, fear of the unknown, Haiku-ish, landscape, nature photography, Poetry, sensate perception, subterfuge, symbolism, the state of the State, the undefined, twilight, uncertainty | Leave a Comment »
August 29, 2015 by simonhlilly
THE OLD MAPS
These threaded paths, it seems, fade first
As the stones are scattered,
hearths humped green and cold,
Byres split, lying sky open,
No more the warm breathed huddle.
No more the feet trampling bracken down the hill.
The roads, though, weave on, either greater or slighter.
They follow the slopes of land and hedge,
Over ford, under the woods, around murk and mud.
Ropes between names that remain much the same.
On the old maps the boldest lines are given to hills and rivers,
The certain land, the shaped sky, the body’s eye for how far to go.
Bold are the mountains names,
and all the rivers and streams called out strong.
The railways proudly curved,
each cutting marked, each bridge, each station.
The nested churches, so many of them,
on river washed promentaries, round walled yards,
God’s garden planted with the patient dead.
All the departed flock silent to wake and watch
The gaudy tombs of the living, their leaden lovely flesh,
Their thirsts unquenched, drowned even, downcast even,
Lost in a mistaken world, old maps redrawn,
The roads lost, the roaring wind, the bleak days.
—
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged change, diminuition, landscape, maps, Poetry, Powys, the past, Wales | Leave a Comment »
August 25, 2015 by simonhlilly
This land,
The land of the dead,
A second skin, translucent,
Golden.
At the centre of each apple,
The sign of love:
The fivefold mutable, son and mother.
Over mountains a cream and violet fog,
Rolled, undulous, attentively folds.
A mysterious union,
Somewhat secret and holy.
The sky, a long vowel, holding its light.
A fluent time,
A tickled, breezeless sigh.
Not so still as to be nothing.
For the tiny roar
Of valley trees, a whispered thing
Measuring miles.
Vaporous drop,
Drip, congealed,
A reflected skin of nothing,
A silver round fruit,
Womb, belly, dream.
This skin
Is our beautiful horizon,
An inner organ.
Our own birdsong:
A poetic heart.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged art, biosphere, deep ecology, fog, Land of the dead, landscape, landscape photography, light, mountains, numinous, perception, Poetry, self-, Wales | 5 Comments »
August 24, 2015 by simonhlilly
GATHER YE
Stealthy as a cat
Night stalks a low moon.
A philosophy of cloud and rain,
A savoured language
Where trees and rocks
Become long, slow vowels.
The wet and fallen tongues
Of petalled roses
Cleaved to bough and path
Melting into something else.
Into the night,
Peeling words
From shape of vastness
And the thick, still silence,
While this world’s half
Dreams and settles down
In a bed of time and skittered light.
Cool along with the living
And the dead, all equal
In shadowed starlight
A tide of slight passions.
Rolling tongue, a roaring
Back and forth
But not so near
As to quell
The simple comfort
Of flecked
And flickered night.
Within its quiet purr
The padding cats
And careful mice
And white flow
Of owls
And the eternal rope river
Hurrying down the valley,
Tree-clothed and glorious.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged art, landscape photography, manifestation, melting, night, Poetry, texture, transformation, Wales, writing | 2 Comments »
August 20, 2015 by simonhlilly
Swathed, mist cool
Tasting blue dawn
As still as an egg
Hushed as only August can be
Held in a lap of seasons
Replete, ripening,
Remembered now
The bite that is frost,
The gradual fall inwards.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged art, August, dawn, hill country, landscape photography, landscspe, late summer, light, mist, photography, Poetry, seasons, sky, valleys, Wales | Leave a Comment »
August 12, 2015 by simonhlilly
veiled
though we sleep
dream or wake.
the world wrapped
in its own light
soaked in whispered
breath.
a fountain of waters
a tree, a river,
wondrous emergent
a circular thing
a pearl gently
warmed in fire,
dawn misted,
floating.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged dawn, landscape, landscape photography, mist, Poetry, summer, sun, Wales | Leave a Comment »
August 10, 2015 by simonhlilly
A CERTAIN BLEAK BEAUTY
1
Endless rains
I wake early before dawn.
The dreams I recall
Are of loss and confusion.
2
The bonfires burn blue and bitter.
The mantra of compassion rings hollow
When all harvests have failed.
3
News from home is slow to arrive:
The roads often impassable,
Slow and winding
Through the hills.
4
My bones are weary.
I turn restless, from side to side.
The flies circling the room
Slower and slower each day
Fail to find the open window.
5
Though we are far
from the borderlands
Everyone fears invasion.
6
A song from the past
I cannot quite remember,
Of the moon and a girl
And a river.
7
Wind from the mountains
Tastes of snow.
The grasses are lank
and yellowing.
8
There is a certain bleak beauty
In the dark night,
Filled only
with the echoing cries of foxes.
9
News from the capital
Is dreary and unconvincing:
Familiar, lazy formulas.
The treasuries are empty,
The halls smell stale of old food.
10
Only this small thin cat is content
Paws flicking in sleep,
Curled up warm.
A collection of fleeting images, reflecting the present, but echoing the laments of those border guards of Ancient China
.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Ancient Chinese poetry, duty, exile., historical parallels, isolation, landscape, landscape photography, Poetry, slow collapse, the borderlands, the edge, the wilds, watch, weather | Leave a Comment »
August 9, 2015 by simonhlilly
WESTER COAST
These hills, this silence-
Silent enough to hear each sound,
Its beginning, its flight, its echoed end.
Silence as balm,
As high tide harbour wave,
Silence that lifts up, that sustains.
Where weight becomes weightless,
Where distance has a taste.
Where rain curves in
And burnishes the light.
Where breath is more
Than breath, is food.
Where night clothes slow,
And owls name space
And the wind across the grasses,
Across the bracken,
Across the rock,
Across the years.
Named,
Whispered forever.
Whispered names rolled,
Remembered.
Stone,
The music of stone,
The certainty of it,
Of its voice
Across the waters.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged art, hills, islands, landscape photography, Poetry, sea, silence, space, Wester Ross, Western Isles | 2 Comments »
July 31, 2015 by simonhlilly
BHUH BHUVAH SVAH
the river of sleep:
not quite song
not quite words,
a murmur continuing.
i have climbed
from the river of sleep
to the river of dawn:
not quite song,
not quite a speaking,
a slow unfolding moment
tasting, somewhat, something.
the river of day:
a strong river is its dream,
a shout of song,
a babble, a chant.
the valley grows clear,
the mountains recede.
the river mind meanders,
silk in the valley of light
to the gayatri metre,
a blue rhythm ornamented
jewelled,
to one infinite presence.
—
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged art, continuity of dreaming, dawn, day, dream, Gayatri mantra, landscape photography, Poetry, sleep, three worlds, Wales | Leave a Comment »
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