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5: Prophecy of the Hero

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A naked babe lies on the hillside.

The fear of prophecy is great.

It waits sleeping and golden,

Unnamed. Without any doubt.

The ragged ones without hope,

Without skill, who warm themselves

Only with their good hearts,

Shall find it there.

That is what the tales say.

They shall be nameless, too.

A milkmaid, a woodsman, a shepherd.

A loved cuckoo it shall be

At their meagre hearth.

A killer of kings, a hero,

A saviour, a long-lost one.

It becomes the truth

Because it is told again and again.

It satisfies the world to be so,

And so it is.

The rivers carve the valleys deep.

The mountains converse with cloud.

All the waters, all the words, converge.

The deep well echoes, resounding.

We join and leave the dance.

A step or two and then return.

Compelled by the music

We fall into the patterns.

Belong, whirl, smile, shine,

Then fade into shadows

And watch breathless as others

Take to their toes, clasp hands,

Lock eye and step and smile

The smile of the dancer.

No competition here.

No winners or losers.

The pattern must be woven,

The threads lock and unlock.

It is prophecy. It is the truth.

Few see it. Fewer still mind.

The stars wheel. The planets rise.

Heroes rise and die.

Roses drop their petals

With the first frosts.

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CERIDWEN AT THE ECLIPSE (25/10/22)

Crooked as the moon, as the moonlit river.

Silver to the horizon and daylight’s tempered glow.

Above our heads, a cauldron full of seething stars.

We are dipped head-first, dyed blue and golden,

White as bone and new again.

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A still pool of light that waves lap.

Connected, the moments coagulate,

Combine under wisdom’s gravity.

One drop contains all, and all that is needed,

Not perfection, but the headlong dance of life,

Falling into itself, lost and rebounding.

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I have forgotten everything but my name,

And now that, too, is slipping away.

What remains is not matter but memory,

Sly, sliding dreams, seeds stirring.

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My song all things sing.

My cooking pot bubbles gently.

You run by my rules, my rhythms.

Child, you are as dark and you are light,

And raucous as starlings, as flippant as seagulls.

Hawk hunting, hare racing, Time devouring,

So you can grow your own wings.

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Sorrow and joy

Dark and light

And all the colours

Stretched as an arcing bow

Between them.

Tell me,

Which is the best?

Which is better?

I know the sorrow that is better than joy.

The darkness more comforting than light,

Water mixed with jet.

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It is on the heights of Beulah now,

Hung between heaven and earth,

Between the sun and the shadow

As the light shifts, too, across the valley,

And the cloud-flocks drift slow

And easy at this turning of the seasons.

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Gwion Bach, told to watch.

Bored and tired of staying still,

‘Til suddenly he knows it all

And is off trailing glory,

And laughing at the witch

He has stolen it all from.

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Yet he, too, is swallowed whole at last

And set adrift on eternity,

Forgetting his name,

Remembering everything else.

All the rivers of the world flowing over him

Until he bursts up loud and shining,

Words cascading,

Putting all the rest to shame.

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No matter, no matter,

That you are not the best, love.

As long as you do the best you can.

Put no one to shame with your brief flash of brightness,

But light up all so all may see they burn as bright.

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For a moment,

For a moment,

We shall be as clear and light.

Before the twilight cauldron

Shall silence us all.

The arcing fall, the leap,

The endless golden moment

Between worlds

Filled with song.

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THE COMPETITION : 3 Prophecy of Glory

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Sunlight shines on the hills over there,

Above Beulah, between heaven and earth.

Watch it alight upon Allt-y-gest, upon Garn Wen.

It strokes the steep valley sides with glory.

We wear the crowns that others have made.

A moment in the sun, a hope it might remain.

The rivers are nearly dry here now,

Their voices silenced, their motion stayed.

If it rains in the mountains

The rivers shall rejoice here.

Thunder in the hills,

And then floods will be upon us

In the parched plains.

This glory steps up to us

Like a gift from the Tylwyth Teg,

A moment of gold in the late afternoon,

Before groping twilight shrouds in stillness

All but the endless dancing midges.

Sunlight now is on the bright brow of the hill.

Sing your song, then return to silence.

All the waters of the world are one river.

A moment of sparkling beauty is shared by all,

The passing sunlight, the rising moon,

The susurration of a million stars.

We rise and fall in a perpetual choir.

Sing to your soul, and be still.

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THE COMPETITION

(1. Prophecy of Fire)

I, not I, cannot lean against this luscious, deadly heat.

We are not roses, to drop our heads, to scatter petals,

To grow again as rain again splashes the dusty leaves.

Our grief all adds up, all weighs down.

These winds, these fires, these bitter, clever bombs, we cannot fight.

There are no winners, just braggers who will fall as well, soon enough,

Choked on the unguent of their profit, the poisons they excused.

Our shades shall not even cool us,

not as the forest shade does at Crychan, at Cwm Henog.

There shall be no violets in that twilight we surrender to at last.

There shall be no streams of delight, no wells of peace.

No tumbling nant at Nant yr Onnen nor crouching Ceirios.

The mists at Cwm Dyfnant:

they will be a smouldering of bracken and barbed wire.

Shadows, shadows.

A weather of shadows. A cloud of shame,

Claws of rock clambering from sunless cleft to cheer the last demise,

The victory of heat and blood,

The will to win, whatever.

The old, the ever, the same.

The truth of prophecy, the dregs, the well-worn path.

There shall be no competition then.

No mastery. No tenderness.

No tongue to sing the rhythms of praise, (the eloquent lies),

not to man, not to God, not to the primroses, not to the speckled thrush.

There shall be no golden chair on the hillside, then.

No crown. No applause.

No reply when the question is asked.

No one left to call for peace.

The sword unsheathed, the petals falling, the kites spiralling,

The fields bare and thistle-browed.

In the end, we shall see that there was nothing,

After all, to chase after, nothing to win.

The great blue skies,

piercing blue once more, over all,

And the cuckoos returned to Garn Wen,

the curlews to Cefn Gast.

This was one of my entries for this year’s Llanwrtyd Eisteddfod. In the end I submitted two poems from a series of seven on the same title. I shall be posting them all here soon enough.

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SCENT OF SALT DECAY (war song)

Wave on wave.

How can anything

Stand against

This world of change?

The cliffs shake,

The moments judder.

It will all be overthrown.

It will all find surcease.

The movement will not stop.

The movement in the heavens.

The whispering rush of undertow,

The pouring sands into the depths.

What is set in motion

Will roll ever on.

We shall move from despair

Into empty lands

Yet not escape the roar of it.

They clamour and tumble

Towards the heights

And fall back broken.

Hollow caves are their hearts

Beating cold wrack and ruin.

The scent of salt decay.

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YOUR JOY

It is the time of year when dreaming bleeds into daylight.

All the roads turn green and make their way back home.

The thrush is singing loudly in the budding ash tree.

The nature of art is to tell truth through lies:

This smudge is not a butterfly,

This hill, you cannot climb,

This moment is long gone.

Crows and cuckoos, the bleat of lambs,

Sunlit grass and the dark uplands.

We war to keep things safe, to keep things the same.

Not even one day will survive into the next.

All the gods are here, waiting for your joy.

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SEEDS

The seeds of sorrow

and joy

Are always present.

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Take a little time

To cultivate

The seeds

of joy.

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IN ABERGWESYN COMMONS

There the world shall open out,

Open out beyond the senses.

A wide valley shout with clouds,

A bonny plaid of river grasses,

A brow of grey tumbled crags

And the ravens and kites wheeling there.

The road rides the waves of miles,

Pushed upwards, lean and full of longing.

Free of voices, free from thought,

As if it were a better world

Unsullied, shaped by simple life

And simple death.

Praised by its mist of rain.

Blessed in its silence.

I have told you the road.

And you found it so.

Open-hearted, washed, released

In Abergwesyn.

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SNOWON THE MOUNTAIN

Snow on the mountain.

When will fools be silent?

When will the wise speak out?

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Snow on the mountain.

Raucous sparrows

Wake a fragile sun.

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Snow on the mountain.

An empty train crosses the valley,

Keeping its promises.

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Snow on the mountain.

Cold wind knocks on every door

Seeking shelter.

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Snow on the mountain.

Murmuring flocks

Sheltering the newborn.

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Snow on the mountain.

The broken tree

Still with new shoots.

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Snow on the mountain.

The coal-house latch

Burns cold.

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Snow on the mountain.

It is always the clever ones

That save us, then destroy us.

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Snow on the mountain.

Blackthorn in the valley.

War is never far enough away.

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This piece consciously echoes an Early Medieval Welsh poem that begins each stanza with the same line. It also has a flavour of a haiku sequence. It was written in early Spring this year.

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