Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, cold, consciousness, landscape, landscape photography, Mynyddoedd Cambrian Mountains, Poetry, seasons, time, Wales, Winter on May 19, 2022| Leave a Comment »
The minutes crack open and bleed cold.
Breath is chapped and hesitant in semi-quavers, a minor key.
The hawk is ice that hunts unrepentant the mountain heights.
Slay complacent warmth, the fickle needs of small hearts.
The flutter of joy, cackle of crow.
A silent field: whiteness extends to the very mists of deep mind.
Carved walls at the edges of space, words written there:
We are extinguished and free.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ancestors, art, bardic, cold, consciousness, landscape, landscape photography, metaphysics, Mynyddoedd Cambrian Mountains, Poetry, the numinous, time, Winter on March 13, 2022| Leave a Comment »
THEIR NAMES
Their names are the doors they wait behind.
Dreaming, dreaming, they thus dream us.
A silver moon scythes the snow fruit that admits us.
Timeless is the round dance of breath.
There is constant war in heaven, and hunting,
And fast, hot seduction.
How else, otherwise, could it be here?
The stars pour themselves into the hills.
There will be ice upon the marshes.
–
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ancestors, cold, consciousness, darkness, death, landscape, mystery, night, Poetry, stars, the numinous, time, Wales, Winter on December 25, 2020| 2 Comments »
WINTER SONG
Storm words roar from the north.
From oceans of ice the sanity of cold.
.
The pines here bend and shudder.
The birches here shimmer light webs.
The waters here grow thick and silent.
.
Time, its old fire wan, weakens limp.
Nothing can be done, its slow moments congealing.
Nothing can be saved, the precious mirrors tint and spall.
.
There is no way out, no way in.
The roads all spattered, batter edged.
Small beasts bear the burden hearts or give them up to rest.
Small beasts melt into the shrines of singing stars.
.
The clouds ring loud, the earth an anvil, cold steel hard.
The sun has three days stood still,
It stutters on now, but in new pain.
.
The days of winter are a long entrancing poem.
It has a recitation hypnotic, unyielding.
The wind shouts it, the north wind, the song of winter long.
.
And winter still to take its deep bite on the warm world.
Day by day the dying are heading west,
They trail their names and their memories, river dreaming.
.
What is left are bones and the teeth of night.
Harsh goddesses who lust for flame,
Older stories than the ones we know,
Older by far, in the language of soot and coupling.
A cave-deep heat lit by animal scents.
.
These first roads are etched on our palms,
Red, in the alignments of circumference.
From here, the silver rivers;
From here, the stones that sing;
From here, the roots reach downwards;
From here, the seeds are gathering together.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, cold, darkness, landscape, landscape photography, listening, night, Poetry, song, Sound, valley, Wales, Winter on December 9, 2020| Leave a Comment »
NIGHT RIVER
Hush, now, hush.
It is the night river rush
In the cool stumbling dark.
Echoes of dogs twist the silent wings of stars.
It is the thrum of moments being born
From the ground sighing upwards.
Orion and his prey:
Every night the same story
But we never tire of it.
The roads we follow to make it right.
The roads we tread to follow on behind.
Night river, going and staying still.
The night river lullaby in its blanket valley.
Tucked away and breathing dreams.
Tucked away as the heat evaporates,
As heads empty of thought,
As bodies drape and forget themselves,
As breath joins the river snd leaves, and leaves.
Night river, the cold as smooth and sharp as stalking cats.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bardic, Brexit, cold, degradation, disaster capitalists, glory, lamentation, landscape photography, mortality, night, Poetry, Taliesin, the dead, the lies of history, the polite and impolite wars, The Spoils of Annwn, the unremembered, the worn ruts of archetypal pain. on July 23, 2020| 3 Comments »
EXIT STRATEGY
.
Easy to make reckless plans with full bellies,
But many hearts sank in silence amid the wild enthusiasm.
To drag us all into darkness is the destiny of heroic leaders,
And it is they and their names will be ever remembered
By the sleek, sleazy poets collecting their nightly gold.
.
Of course, there were plans and there was strategy.
Of course, it was not immediate – that dissolution
Into the suffocating mists of isolating fear.
The poets’ make clear that there was some fine history there.
But we went into the great design believing we brought light and honour
And hoping quietly for at least a little plunder to justify the slaughter.
.
No one had told us that the air there would be sharper than our steel;
That our proud bellowing voices would be snuffed out
Only by the weight of the unutterable silence of that place.
That the chains that chaffed us, ( the poet’s said), were the very sinews
That held our bones and breath, our only strength, our only continuity.
.
We shall be mocked and sneered at by any who survive,
Even refined orators driven mad by the senselessness and broken screams of it.
These bright heroes dragged dizzy from the conflagration of hearts,
Goodness sold for pennies or twisted into shields to refute incompetence.
Greed disguised as quest. That tomb will not be opened.
No triple spells to cajole the lost towards a familiar banality.
No back to normal as the ghostly voices weigh down the thin air
With starved dreams and the corpses of tomorrow’s children.
Nothing but worms, now, of glory.
A heroic sunset it was, and now the cold darkness is creeping in.
.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, cold, darkness, landscape photography, Poetry, snow, stars, stillness, Wales, Winter on February 4, 2019| 1 Comment »
snow night now
Snow now, falling without degrees, silent as night is.
I shall become night, standing still here,
Starfilled and let go of all, dying slowly,
Imperceptibly cooler, waiting small sounds
and sight to clear, the shapes of other’s thoughts
Falling white and falling white
To settle without degrees and blameless.
The words tumble, some mine, some from elsewhere,
Which is which and why distinguish?
The small noises of the night
In snowfall and starlit dark.
The stars, nothing more patient
Nor sorrowful, watching it all blink
And change, blink and vanish,
Blink and sleep.
World’s bones grow cold
So far from fires
So far from fires.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awareness, cold, consciousness, first frost, nature, night, Poetry, season's change, small life, stars on October 28, 2018| 3 Comments »
SMALL THINGS
To die on a winter’s night
And know that your last breath
Will be eaten by a million
Cold and hungry stars.
These flakes of furred life
Curled around their small souls
Encircled by great horizons
That ever suck the warmth
From fast-beating hearts.
No hardship, though, in letting go.
In leaving the fury, in leaving
The dawn cold to other hunters
And the sharp songs in bare branches
And the sharp eyes longing to peck.
To need no need now, to rise and fly,
To become incorporeal, incorporated
In the memory of an ever-loving world,
The blanketed round and sweet murmured world.
_
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Cambrian Mountains, change, cold, landscape photography, pattern, Poetry, seasons, snow, Wales, Winter on December 14, 2017| 1 Comment »
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.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, cold, landscape photography, Poetry, seasons, waiting, Wales, Winter on November 19, 2017| 2 Comments »
TO WAKE IN WINTER
To wake in the long darkness
And feel the slow cold seep in.
To love, and to war against those
We do not love, is not enough.
Drained and wan, the ache of it.
The decay of worn roads and reasons.
The ravens are silent as they push
Against the folds of cloud.
The hills ripple but they do not rise.
We miss the touch of sudden sunlight
And a simple purpose to go on.
Is patience a curse or a virtue?
—
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cold, darkness, hope, longest night, night, Poetry, standstill., star hymns, stars, time.space, Winter, winter solstice on December 22, 2016| 8 Comments »
Solstice stars.
Stand still.
Take stock.
Light is short,
The cold is long.
No matter how secure
We are only ever one breath
Away from death.
From becoming fallow earth,
From falling frozen onto ice.
Take heed
Stand still.
The small time.
The long night.
In darkness
The slow drips slow,
Then stop completely.
Stars watch
And sing
Though offer little warmth,
But the way home,
The way home.
—
simonhlilly 