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Posts Tagged ‘change’

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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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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THE ROSES

The roses

They have been in bud

For months

Through sun and rain.

Now they open,

Bloom for a day or two

Giving joy to all,

Then fade and

Fall apart.

The roses.

The roses.

They throw off their beauty

Like dancers.

They value more

Their roots

And their thorns.

The blood red hips,

The hard won strength

To go on.

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RISING, RETURNING

Rising through mist and rust and gold.

The rain coming and going and the oaks holding on.

History repeating itself, as it always does,

And the eternal poets weeping and laughing

In their sunlit words.

We shall reach home soon, as we always do,

Until the very last time when time shall slow and stop,

And the oaks, only, will be holding on then

In rust and gold and sunlit drifts.

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Tumbling

TUMBLING

My heart rests lightly

on this wind.

It dips and bobs

and lets go

tumbling in the passing light

rolling off the gradients

of the seasons.

Fragments of rainbows come and go

piercing time with beauty

– a reminder.

The leaves too, dance and let go,

and green slides off the hills

to settle in sheltered places.

Bracken turns quick gold

then long reds.

Air spiced with things losing names

becoming something else,

becoming earth.

The willows dance,

the poplars dance all silver,

the birches, gilded.

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the year sweeps seasons
like a passionate cloud
from these soft hills.

and the bitter cold is here
and the turbulent waters
and the fire that talks loud and soft,
singing of snakes and angels in the grate.

and the hush-now, hush-now of cars
speeding past to work in the draughty town.

the trees dark and bare
sliced in thin moonlit night.

yesterday, the deep, blue-shadowed snow.
now, a knifing wind, a fast melt
and word of valley floods.

bless the bones of things,
though they may ache and ache.
on bitter slope the memories slide.
it is a thin sinew
holds everything together.

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Storm Morning

Into the slow heron lift of it.
The storm morning roar,
Like a city train, rattles roof and windows.

Druid trees with one eye shut
Stand on one leg and let go of nearly everything –
That is what their roots, deep as choirs, allow.

On green meadow and crashing hill
We push against a sting of rain.
Lost, but not lost as the ones by the sea,
Watching the waves eat the shore and the harbours drown
And all the long, safe years melted away
In a wall of water and sound.

It is a patient world, willing always to start again.
A reformulation of parameters, season by season.
What is gone is gone, the autumn trees say.
What is gone is gone, says the storm of grey morning.

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A Season’s End
(Epitaph for Vicky)

we become more uncertain
and waver by the day,
our past melting behind us.
a change of season, inevitable.

where now that warm pulse?
that voice? that presence?
altered a little into sunlight,
into a vast, bright landscape,
into a bigger heart.

for there will always be beauty,
though no one promised joy
without sorrow.

we have melted into summer
wrapped in cooling green shade.
and some of us have not returned.

here then, the blossom heart of hawthorn,
here, a cowslip sky and creamy elder.
in the forest still are one or two violets
and the sound of running water,
and the droop and sudden flash of bluebells.
the sigh of swallows and the cuckoo misted valley.

where she walks now is all beauty,
and calm, and easy forgetting.
a summer that shall come upon us all.
and a long day, and a warm evening,
and a long, silent, singing night.

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Looking towards Carn Wen at evening.

To watch the pass
of light and dark
and how they each
shape these hills, this way and that,
is all I wish now to do.
we live, we die
as the distances reveal themselves
then vanish with the pass of a cloud.

if not to fill our time with beauty,
if not to see the world as it becomes us,
then what?
a flicker of pain, a flight upwards of joy
and the rolling of light in the valleys.
what other instruction
for a being of discernment?
what other lesson but this?
and to count the days
’til cuckoos and swallows.
and to keep to the constellations
of sheep and the openness
of lambs.

we shall end again soon enough.
peace is here
and it is sufficient for a whole universe.
and to watch the clouds pile
and drift at the setting sun.
and the smell of dew
on grass.

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ARTIST DEPARTS

1
Snow falls down, the dead begin a new dream.
Their words, sweet and bittered breath
Beneath roots of moistest tongue, a tree of old passions,
Cross-tied upon new cardinals
And drooping with melancholy.
The forest shifts gracefully in rumour.
One has left, they say, who chose his own way
And chose his way of passing.
No greater gift than this: to bequeath us his good death
And a long, slow, fading song.
Every language, a mysterious stream.

2
Rain turns snow in darkness.
Across the valley, farmhouse lights prick emptiness.
In the deep below, the ever-river tumbles.
There is news of an old man leaving,
Turning to dream another dream.
His quickening smile, (the birds of dawn
Forgetful of darkness), now the singing sun.
Up the hill the moon sinks backwards, thin and white.
It will linger a while with his words,
Longer than most, will not be forgot so soon
Sunk in knotted bones of generations,
A certain look, smooth-gestured.
Carried on, carried down, the river’s song is the same.
The farmhouse lights one by one blink out,
The stars darkened, the dreamers shift
And turn onto their sides, facing the change.
As the rain becomes snow,
And the river in darkness,
And the song becomes somewhere else to go.

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