LITTLE LLANGAMMARCH
Little Llangammarch under wood and under hill.
Not quite awake, not quite asleep,
Dreaming as leaves drift down.
One road, more or less, one shop, one bar, one hall,
A church, a chapel or two.
Time each day measured by two trains north, two trains south.
Toes wriggling always in Irfon and Cammarch,
(Where the two are met and knitted, a feathered mating).
Root or rock, I cannot say for sure.
This stone sheds syllables in flakes,
Prayers slurred, folded, forgot.
This root, iron red, waves wrapped,
Unworn, unmoved, on the hill above,
A saint’s house, stilled glory, skybound.
The swoop and quiver of the red kite’s call.
Shade-huddled sheep, the quiet of the field.
The past it grows thinner by the year
Lost for words, the long losing of names,
The who and where, the why weeded over,
The hero’s house, a longed-for truth
Scattered in byre and farmyard.
Between the open-eyed houses
and the river, still and low as glass,
Come tumbling flocks from the fields,
Down between the cars a bleating tide,
Chivvied, the bobbing, weaving dogs behind.
It hovers: the mountain silence.
They come and go of their own accord,
Leaving clouds and mist for a while, for a while,
Between what is left unsaid
And the slow rain.
Here below, where woodpeckers cling statuesque
and jackdaws skid and race
Like kids in playgrounds, cops and robbers,
Shootout at noon.
Here, in the fields again
The sheep wander as numerous as stars and as white.
The wind blows colour and light,
To and from the bluffs of Abergwesyn.
The rolling darkness, the quiet night descending
From the deep well of Cwm Graig Ddu.
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simonhlilly 