Posted in Uncategorized, tagged as it is, landscape, MidWales, Poetry, politics, spring, Wales on May 12, 2017| Leave a Comment »
How the cuckoos sing sweetly
Of treachery and loss.
In the dewy morning
The rivers run low,
The hills to themselves,
Quietly weeping.
Ravens are joking on their way
To the slaughter-fields.
They do not need
The permission of gods
To be satisfied and at peace.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, Buddhism, cosmic balance, Haiku-ish, invocation, landscape, Poetry, praise, protectors, ritual, shinto, Sound, Tao, Wales, Wang Wei on April 29, 2017| 7 Comments »
THE SENDING AWAY OF NEGATIVE ENERGIES
One, two, three.
The thrush in the ash:
Vast mantra of space,
His bell voice and dorje bill.
Phurba crow
Struts alert amongst the dreaming sheep.
He stabs the ground
With a pure vision.
Silence as the clouds build to rain.
Taiko in the hills.
Lorry dungchens drone
On the valley road.
My ears are pierced with golden words.
Golden dust is in my eyes.
Golden smoke arises from horizon altar.
The Will of Heaven, unfathomable
As ever.
Some say there are stories to tell,
Some say stories to disprove.
In every hedge a blackbird rattles alarm,
Though there is nothing to fear.
Who has the shell as blue as sky?
The robin, I think.
Its white eternal arc
Is the world turned inside out.
Lying unnoticed, fallen from the chapel hawthorn.
A ruse to escape death.
Like shinto priests
The magpies strut with care the chapel roof.
They enunciate name and place
And the desires of each supplicant.
Hop and bow, hop and bow,
And call aloud to the spirits
Who will listen.
Whilst the domed mountain
Rests in Wang-Wei
And Wang-Wei rests in the mountain.
The ghosts of words stretched thin,
Their lips unsure whether to cry or smile,
But that is the nature of prayer and praise.
The whines of the psalmist irritating the gods
To distraction.
Give a little thought to the little things,
The wriggling life stepped upon unseen.
The unconcerned hosts, the vast inconsequential
Upon whom you rest.
The threads wear thin,
The seed unhurried.
A syllable breath forms
In the river’s mouth.
Never quite uttered.
Never quite understood.
We have not enough silence,
Not enough pause to continue here long.
From the dimpled, starry horizons
The Protectors gather.
What shall they deem worthy,
And what destroyed?
It is not a trick question.
But there is no answer.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ancestors, lament, landscape, Poetry, rural depopulation, Wales on April 20, 2017| 2 Comments »
And they are still here
Still beneath the land
Protesting the desolations
As ravens do on heather banks.
And they are still here
Too proud to move or sway
Driven down, weathered and grey
As their own gateposts, slowly
Laminating, word on word,
One purpose losing its one memory.
And they are still here
Though always leaving.
The language of rivers
Muttered on slated lips.
Eyes closed,
Dreaming on hilltops.
They are still here
Initials carved on tumbled stones.
The neat hearth scattered,
Black earth, cold fire,
Comfort lost.
They are still here on
The cool breezed morning,
In dew bright hollows,
On silent roads
Sunlit, full of hope.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged landscape, Poetry, Wales on March 26, 2017| Leave a Comment »
TRANSIENT 7
Were it to remember itself
In a million years
It would dream these
Mists and valleys
Wondering were they real.
And like a song sung in sleep
The birdsong drifting from
Each white hollow
And the rippled hilltops
Coming and going
And the hills and fields
Lying so green and glorious
And the slow rain
The slow rain.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Classical Indian music, early spring, Haiku, Haiku-ish, landscape, light, Mid Wales, mystery, Poetry, Wales on March 23, 2017| 1 Comment »
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PAKAD: CLOUDLESS SILENCE
It is a cloudless silence, a stretched skin of light,
White wheel of sun and moon, stars silver singing road,
Painted vast and edgeless, the deep rolling earth
Breathing in hills, dreaming in valleys.
Cloudless silence here
White light pierces winter mind.
The tumbling waters
Cloudless silence here
Lost in mist, crow calls its mate.
Cold air, dogs barking.
Cold breeze shifts the mist
Dogs bark in the distant town.
A cloudless silence
In cloudless silence
All these thoughts fall silent now.
Footsteps on the road.
A delicate touch
Keeping warm this egg of words.
New cloudless silence.
Three crows dancing song
Cold breeze on the snowcapped hill.
A cloudless silence.
Pakad, jor, alap.
A slow unfolding morning.
This cloudless silence.
—
A pakad is a theme in Classical Indian music. It is a short series of notes that identifies and characterises every raag. It appears and reappears throughout each piece of music. It is a constant moment of return to mood and purpose.
Alap is the slow development and investigation of the note sequences of a raag, a discovery of themes.
Jor is the section that continues the development within a more rhythmical framework.
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Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, changing light, dawn, landscape, light, Mid Wales, photography, Poetry, skies, spring, Wales on March 17, 2017| 2 Comments »
TRANSIENT 5
A day of slow skies
Testing new brightnesses.
Cwm Dwfnant is lost
In dreams of cloud once more.
In the green centre
The river whispers
And the crows feel that
Spring is near now, over the hills,
And sunlight, too,
In the slate and stately rise and exhale.
A sleeping world,
Dreaming of waking,
Dreaming of a small unfolding.
—
TRANSIENT 6
Tinder, the horizon.
Laid just so
With blue on blue
To catch spark and roar
Come sunrise.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Haiku-ish, landscape, Poetry, spring, sun, weather, Winter on March 5, 2017| 1 Comment »
Spring sun.
All is forgiven.
Though the bitter wind!
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, landscape, Mari Lwyd, mystery, photography, poerty, the past, tradition, unknown, Wales on January 15, 2017| Leave a Comment »
MARI LWYD 2
Sparks spin into night.
Through darkness a white ghost moves.
We follow, laughing.
Landscape remains.
Mind stays the same.
It is only the light
That changes,
Only thoughts
That come and go.
The music of it all
Remains,
Though the notes
Are constantly rearranged.
This dream so real
We fear there is no other.
We follow the grey empty void
For which we have made sparkling eyes
And a name and a thunderous roar;
And filled it with questions and answers,
Sustaining itself in darkness,
Intruding into our hearth.
Skull empty judge,
Bent bone and curved empty,
A void of time.
Lacerating tattered hearts
The wind that scars the hills
And incrementally erodes
Once warm moments
Wearing down words to screams,
Wisdom to leaden clubs.
A white sky.
Snow cold are the hills.
The rain freezes.
Beauty is not for you to survive,
But to savour
And then to long for forever.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, cold morning, dawn, landscape, landscape photography, mist, mountains, nature, Poetry, Wales, Winter on December 31, 2016| 14 Comments »
Ice Breath
Is it not true
That it is always the past
We burn to keep ourselves warm?
The young sun
Is on the tops now,
The deep valleys shadowed,
The mists let go, rise and melt away.
One slow hawk
Skims the treetops.
The cold, still sky
Has yet to choose its colour.
Ice will soon breathe,
relax to water,
Struck by the
warm weight
of light.
Those
that have survived
the night
Will stir
and sing.
—
simonhlilly 