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.
simonhlilly 