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Sunday Hymns

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 14, 2014| Leave a Comment »

SUNDAY HYMNS

What
Is a language
That is not spoken?
Silence.

Silent as the empty cottages,
As the deserted fields,
The grass-grown tumps,
The heaped-up midden.

Good men, great men and brave,
One by one, or leading others.
Seeming a wash of tides,
Motions of change,
Revolution of planets.
So they may be,
Or ripples on a pond,
A perturbation,
A breeze upon the forest tops:
Here, a noise, then gone.

Where are the great waves
As the tides recede?
Their roar growls less.
Sorrow and joy only.
Now a tale,
A whisper,
An epitaph,
A place for ivy fingers
To cleave to,
Slurring every mark,
Knife and chisel.

To end the silence,
Or to restore the silence?
To weave it.
Become substance,
Become word,
Become rhythm.

When does habit
Turn tradition?
When, pleas and moans,
Prayers?

Sunlight on
The distant mountain.
A wren seeks grubs
Among broken
Flowerpots.

—-

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Yew Grove at Llanafan Fawr

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on September 13, 2014| 2 Comments »

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YEW GROVE AT LLANAFAN FAWR

1
Light sensible, thick as darkness
And light veiled, filtering downwards.

One red cup, one seed dropped,
Rippled out, measured by millenia.
A ring of sinew trunks, weighted, poised.

2
Where the old road
Cups the round, green breast
Of Llanafan Fawr.

Where the quiet mound
Floats above the heads of valley oaks
(Distant voice of rock-sided Chwefri).

Where the dead bask in sun,
Sleep in shade,
Their names carefully chiselled,
Painted, kissed in lichen.

3
Rising up
From the Underworld
Where the dead become stars,
Where bones multiply,
Where dreams are born
And shadows grow their own souls.
There, the umbilical roots
Bind light to darkness
Making song
That wheels this world.

4
Fed by scintillating constellations,
A certain, mutual apotheosis,
A rippling out of layered years
Laid down in sinuous orbits,
A hug of dimensions,
A vessel for longevity, for remaining.
Only holding on.
Only breathing.
A mirror from each metalled yuga,
Withstanding heaven’s gobby adolescence.

5
Three great props to prop the sky.
As the gods choose their own forms
Grown from curse and pleadings,
From a universal need, the deepest science
Of leaning upon
They have measured up,
Filled the matrices,
Solved the quadratic and the algebraic,
Judged the swing of planetary orbit.
Readjustments made, reconfiguring
A weighty gravitation,
Collapse, expand, spin.
(Those three doors all life dances through)

6
Old before the brazen, gaudy eagles
Meticulously trampled lands not theirs
To glut the slovenly cities of the South.

Old before the contrivance of contorted guilt,
The crosses to be borne or cast away,
The ring of truth, the hope of doves.

Old before the King of the North and his kin
Bred saints amongst sacred hills.
Before Dewi and Afan, (who, maybe,
Were as eloquent as uncle Taliesin),
Sheltered wise candles from the wild storms:
The slick guttering stroke of marauding steel,
Thud and groan and a pouring out of life
In a red gush, anguished and final, among the silent trees.

Old as the penetration of water through rock,
The endless drip to sunless oceans below,
Is the strife of men, the lamentation of their women.

Old, and the richest of composts.
The most intricate of tallies,
A long genealogy, a swirl of lusts.
All commingled, compressed, considered,
All fit and meet, an elevated sight,
A blossoming of poison and beauty,
A perfect circle, a sunlit ripple.
One tree is a forest,
One grove a memorial
To these thousand thousand lives,
Drawn up, drawn in,
Held, encompassed.

—-

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The Yews of Abergwesyn

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on August 30, 2014| 4 Comments »

LLANHIFANGEL ABERGWESYN

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Heather, royally purple, clothing the hillsides above.
Around the circles of Llanhifangel Abergwesyn,
The silver, sanding shores of Irfon, curved and rippled.

Sheltered from sheep, this round silent shield
Is where they are gathered, where they are splintered,
Where they are woven.

United, divided, leaning into the storms of Time.
Hausers swinging between centuries
Binding sun and earth, to heaven, even.

Knitted light revolved and spun,
Wheels in wheels, a thousand eyes
Open and closing, a blink of orbital rhythm.

These trees, these towers, these castles roaring upwards.
Ladders of chant and silence,
Spilt shade.

Bow ye down,
Bow ye graceful between the gravestones,
Flaked and moss green.

Bone and mind incorporate,
Reawoke, voiceless and benign
In speckled sunlight, sublime.

—

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Brecon Beacons

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 8, 2014| 2 Comments »

Violet blue
The bluebell haze.
Twisted, threaded,
Through and through
The oak green.

The shadow dropped
From big-breasted hills
Rolling in waves:
Valley’s deep sigh.

The road sways:
Head, this way and that
A hound seeking home,
The river snake’s companion.

I am blown free and torn
In this cloud-edged land,
Misted and veiled
All purposes tasted.

A scumble of swifts
Above the black poplars.
A heaven white scent
The rowan, the hawthorn.

The names: a rough reed bed
Tempered with savoured vowel.
Roughshod, a blacksmith’s anvil
Of a language.
Meanings annealed, malleable,
A memory of saint and well
And sandal.

A here and a there
Where miles elongate
Or evaporate.
Where moments grow roots,
Deserve names, a fame
For remaining.

A valley cloud, high and low,
A wooded place, an inhabited mound,
Yew and chestnut,
A fading, rained-upon blossom
An adherence to loneliness.

—

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Third Key To The Green Kingdoms

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 25, 2014| 4 Comments »

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KEY THREE

(St. Brendan’s Chapel, Barra)

Nowhere nearer
The Isles of the Blest,
The dead gather together,
Warrior and child.

Coaxed by a hand of hills
The land launched
Into silver sunset ocean.

Go on, you can do it.
It will be alright,
Wonders await you…
The voyage into mystery
Stepping stones to heaven.

Eternal islands,
Eternal seas.

—

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Great Halls of Memory

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 15, 2013| 2 Comments »

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Great Halls of Memory

Such a long time since last visiting The Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Completely misremembered its architecture and style. In my mind it was red brick and High Gothic, but no, now, at least, it seems to be Victorian Neoclassicism, all columns, domes and marble cladding. Perhaps there are corridors, rooms, floors, wings in different styles, different times, different memories.
Ascend the staircase,
The head that looks out,
The open dome,
The caverned stone skull.
Nothing else but a memory palace. Slow the heart, slow the eye,
The crowds blur and fade,
Their footsteps to whispers,
Their passing to plumes, dust motes dancing

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All that remains, motionless, eternal: the memories, the constructions of memory, the shaping and honing of memory. The forms frozen and holy, the skilful turn of chisel and burin. Dark stairwells, cold. Curved stone scrolls, careful, less inhabited. The images of the dead, a maintenance of expectations,
The mental bones,
The bones of the mind,
The fossil fragments of heart,
Congealment.
Not as it was. Not as it seemed. Mind matter welded to timeless earth. An imposition of perfected memory, fabricated, polished. These we keep. These we cherish. These we honour – the bones of our ancestors, deep in our skull cities.
A record of dancing dust.
A reassessment of forgetting.
Mr Brown would come from afar,
Smiling sweetly ( eyes like jackdaws).
He would know, he would number the portals, the gateways, the porticoes, rearranged by time and place for fond ghosts to find then lose themselves. Hungry ghosts, longing, bored, wandering vestibular chambers.

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Neither are they our memories
Harboured here.
Not ours, but wrenched,
Wedged, removed
From forgotten, desolate ruins.
Passed down by the impecunious,
The vanquished, the uninterested.

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Our own little memories, ghost memories, too, no more sweetly harboured at sunset satisfied. They, wandering, away, pick trinkets in other lands, embellishments. Each time told remembered the last time told, the last time, told. An evolution of maps and stories, a hearsay, an edifice of straw and mud, an edifice of marble, collated by grain and polish, by echo, by echo eroded, by echo reborn.
Nothing but chaff and chatter
That fades at closing time,
The weight of stone time,
An instant frozen.
A pin dropping.

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all the photographs here were taken on my visit. It was not my intention, time and equipment were not sufficient. But I salvaged a few blurry images and worked them a little.it is a place to go to summon strange juxtapositions,reflections,spaces

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Figuratively

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 7, 2013| 10 Comments »

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FIGURATIVELY

Such as it is,

(All immanent),

It fades, fades, flies, falls.

Our art,

The only way

To catch the present moment,

Reflected, mirrored

On this moving, rippled

Lake of memory.

—-

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Arched (part 7)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 5, 2013| 2 Comments »

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ARCHED (Part 7)

Stone
Cast in,
Rippling
Time’s pool.

Outwards
And inwards,
A settled pattern
Of comings and goings.

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And the weight
Of the stone:
An anchor, a haven.
Small, still island
In a restless sea.

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A forest for song.
A forest for silence.
A carpenter’s house,
A house of edge and curve.
A mother’s house,
A house of succour,
Of promises kept,
Of warm dark.

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Artificer’s jewel:
A design
Of forever.

—

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Arched (Exeter Cathedral)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 22, 2013| 14 Comments »

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ARCHED (Exeter Cathedral)

I was drifting through, sifting through, drowning in, the looking for some particular misplaced images and came across some photographs of Exeter Cathedral from a few years back. As our local town, we are familiar with the studied, silent bulk of the building and can, easily enough forget the utter splendour of the architecture and the dedication and effort that went into its creation. Exeter is not the biggest, but it is a very pleasing interior. It has an impressive West Front even though many of the carvings are replacements for those damaged by bombings in the Blitz. Over the last twenty or so years the interior carvings have been repainted to show their original gilding and bright colours. The roof bosses in Exeter are amongst the best and most varied in England, with a startling creative effusion of the Green Man image.

It squats
Muted, beached.
A honeycombed carapace,
Scoured crab
On drift shoreline.
A cry of gulls,
Still
At evensong.

cathedral front

There is a steadying presence in these old buildings, like ancient trees they set roots and hold time steady, somewhere between then and soon. Continuity. Continuance. A maintenance of faith. A measurement in bells and lessons. An axis, both long and tall. An anchor, a haven.

Caverned,
A weight of years,
Halted, encapsulated.
The green lawns
Where tourists flop
And locals watch
Or lie back.
Below that green turf
Roil and scrape the
White, white bones,
Skull and lolly jaw,
Thigh and hip
pressing upwards.
Like worms by rain
The dead are raised up.
The warm flesh weight
Subtly pushing down upon them,
Disturbed, alerted by the murmur of the living,
The chatter of the breathing,
The careless touch, the laughter.
They turn and stretch and unbend
The need to leave the holy must,
The flow of air, the scurry of gulls,
The shadows coming and going,
Hiding and revealing
The saints’ patient faces
Always looking west.

cathedral yard

Always a little ironic to see the living lying on those careful, green cut lawns. The Cathedral Green quiet, serene, sedate, overlooked by tearooms, by tweed-draped windows. Hardly an inch below the surface, the centuries of the fortunate wealthy piled up closer to God, buried in the wake of His rock ship, harboured in the long hours, waiting resurrection, to join the sunny picnickers, the gossiping long-legged girls, the running children, who all unthinking, brush and pick at the grassblades, the stubble of the dead…..

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I will be posting more from this treasure-trove soon. Grainy, dark, inexpert pictures emerging from the shadows. a writhe of words and stone. my tongue is dust and forests frozen, illuminated, transfigured, made mythic…..

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The Great Ones

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 11, 2013| 3 Comments »

THE GREAT ONES

We make our own monsters,
Feed them and sustain.
Dark mirrors
That crush, embitter,
Defining right,
Ripping nerve from muscle
Leaving insensate force
To rule and chain.
Their names
Will live forever
While the quietly good
Dissolve back
As if never.

Their rise is ever
Our failure.
A choice,
A strong dream
Promulgated, given,
Over-ruling a more
Delicate path.

(The willows with their wicks of flame,
The hollow, tumbling call of the owl,
The sky’s gentle rain, fingertip chrism.
The hearth cracks as it cools).

The demons we have cast out,
Those we despised and disowned,
They rage free now, running the world.
Exultant, sure, unconstrained,
They know the fertile, dark earth,
They taste the mellow, crumbled humus,
The undigested decay of hopes,
The ephemeral, hesitant prayers
Laced through with doubts.
Wherever they step,
There is the cooling shadow
Of their triumph, the withering
Of breath, the tunnelling of sight.

(On the still air of morning, dew and mist,
A wood pigeon sails, glides, broad-keeled,
Down to its new nest, its new mate.)

Fire of mind spits and blusters,
Fire fanned and racing, consuming
To continue, eating itself, moving on.
Ashes, dust, smoulder, we eat all, move on.
A bitter combustion lacking all restraint,
Lost in itself, howling, ever hungry.

(The six lokas gently dance,
A play of blossoms, syncopated motion.
Gentle rattle, the bone ornaments,
As rainbow dakinis sway cloudwards.)

The rebels refuse to see any ineffable now.
Enough, they think: a trick that breeds complacency.
The will of Heaven: a slave chain.
Deceit they know: deceit they expect in all.
Their flowers that flourish are the bloom of pain,
The mistaken identity, the immortal secret.
Inchoate, needing all, it grows in secret,
Displacing order with hierarchy,
Growing its own executioner.

These are the Great Ones,
The Immortals, draped in gore.
Do not turn away nor shudder.
Only a clear morning gaze will cool them.
Only a tear-fall of bright dew will wash.
Refuse the spark to fury and fight.
Refuse the glory, refuse the judgement.

Our medicine. What shall be our medicine?
Measured poisons, a taste of death,
A return, a clearing of spaces,
An emptying, an unwinding,
A gesture of removing fear,
A small laughter, a shrug.

What shall be our medicine,
What our poison?
Stillness is an action.
Silence an answer.
No choice, still a choice.

Still the choice.
Remain,
Unhindered.
The roaring fires extinguish themselves,
A transmigration of souls.

**

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