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Posts Tagged ‘nature’

CERIDWEN AT THE ECLIPSE (25/10/22)

Crooked as the moon, as the moonlit river.

Silver to the horizon and daylight’s tempered glow.

Above our heads, a cauldron full of seething stars.

We are dipped head-first, dyed blue and golden,

White as bone and new again.

.

A still pool of light that waves lap.

Connected, the moments coagulate,

Combine under wisdom’s gravity.

One drop contains all, and all that is needed,

Not perfection, but the headlong dance of life,

Falling into itself, lost and rebounding.

.

I have forgotten everything but my name,

And now that, too, is slipping away.

What remains is not matter but memory,

Sly, sliding dreams, seeds stirring.

.

My song all things sing.

My cooking pot bubbles gently.

You run by my rules, my rhythms.

Child, you are as dark and you are light,

And raucous as starlings, as flippant as seagulls.

Hawk hunting, hare racing, Time devouring,

So you can grow your own wings.

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THE COMPETITION

( 2. The Prophecy of Flood)

Tell me, then, that there are no gods of weather

Now everything is measured, everything explained.

That we can go about our business safe and sane,

Not wondering what shall befall us if we anger or stray.

That knowing vanquishes fear.

That naming disarms the fact.

.

I would not pit the gods of cities against the gods of the world.

Though the god of money enchains us to its tumbling promises,

Though we are comforted here by the law and order

Laid out in concrete streets.

.

The breath of time we measure, but the god of Time is not of us.

The god of storm, the god of light, the god of life, the god of death,

The god of twilight, the god of decay.

They are all no smaller now than they were before.

Tame the weather, and there is a greater weather.

Cage Time, and there is a greater Time.

The gods are those against whom we dare not compete.

The sky towers we have built of swaying, rickety philosophies are no match.

The chiselled, honed words, all the equations, mean nothing

But a murmur dream.

.

Is there anything more poisonous to the soul than competition?

The battle for worth, the war for best?

Listen! I am the best at sorrow, the best at melancholy.

I am forty days of rain. My bitterness, a pointing finger

That wipes the slate clean. Above all. Below all. Separate. Distinct.

In the flood I am the spark that burns down the one remaining boat.

Sneering at lesser things is my entitlement.

First among the angels. Too great to fall.

The Elders lined up there on their thrones, counting points, counting scores.

Chosen by the chosen to join the ranks of the chosen.

Offer up your pious praise to God and deftly gather up the gold.

We honour the first, the second, the third (with a shrug)

Wave through the beautiful, wave through the best.

Wave off the rest. Judge and separate.

Gwion was a pauper, grabbed by the ear and told to watch.

Afagddu, the soot black sullen shadow, was the chosen one,

Born for greatness, a certain destiny.

Taliesin: best at bragging –

I was. I am. No one better than I.

The stunned poets casting up their eyes to

The heaven he says he comes from,

Packing their bags, looking to find less glamour-filled halls.

He knew a thing or two:

Please the crowds and praise the kings.

A bawdy innuendo, a prayer, a vision of glorious death,

And for the quietly watching intellectuals, ambiguity in spades.

A foundling of dubious parentage, brought up by rivers and seas.

A certain affinity to water, like Moses: cool fountains and dowsing

The springs in burning deserts, slaking thirst with words and glory.

How many streams are there? How many rivers?

Following the frightful pillars of smoke, the pillars of flame,

The burning bushes, the falling star.

There is a green land, and a green hill far away,

And the best of the best shall find peace there.

Across the river to the green lands for your sorrows.

A green hill of suffering for all your good works.

You shall become forever now, a constellation

Of the revolving fortress of glorious night.

I, not I, the river that is your awen,

The best, displayed in shining light,

A rainbow promise.

A slight and glorious

compensation

for past and future horror.

This is the second poem that was written with Llanwrtyd Eisteddfod in mind. Not one of the finals I chose to submit: too long a rant and not so obviously following the theme, though it continues and develops some of the threads found in the other seven parts.

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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.

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YOUR JOY

It is the time of year when dreaming bleeds into daylight.

All the roads turn green and make their way back home.

The thrush is singing loudly in the budding ash tree.

The nature of art is to tell truth through lies:

This smudge is not a butterfly,

This hill, you cannot climb,

This moment is long gone.

Crows and cuckoos, the bleat of lambs,

Sunlit grass and the dark uplands.

We war to keep things safe, to keep things the same.

Not even one day will survive into the next.

All the gods are here, waiting for your joy.

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IN ABERGWESYN COMMONS

There the world shall open out,

Open out beyond the senses.

A wide valley shout with clouds,

A bonny plaid of river grasses,

A brow of grey tumbled crags

And the ravens and kites wheeling there.

The road rides the waves of miles,

Pushed upwards, lean and full of longing.

Free of voices, free from thought,

As if it were a better world

Unsullied, shaped by simple life

And simple death.

Praised by its mist of rain.

Blessed in its silence.

I have told you the road.

And you found it so.

Open-hearted, washed, released

In Abergwesyn.

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RIVER WORDS

They do not say

What they sing

For your listening

But for their own joy.

No will of their own

But to find the deepest

And return.

Where streams meet:

A birth of spirals.

By the bridge

The patterns hold steady.

Acquiescence to the way.

We think we know them

By their names we know them.

We know them by their names.

You name the river

‘Destroyer of the children of men’.

I name this river

‘Gentle mother of fields’

The river calls itself:

‘Longing for stillness

In the deep’.

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BHAIRAV (THE WEIGHTLESS WEIGHT OF AIR)

Air.

Flowing river from mountains cooled,

And the passion of stars

Piercing the bow of Time.

Air.

Layering droop and singing yet

On the long slope of dawn.

Air.

Tinted blue yet.

Twisted warm and wan.

Twisted slow, rolling.

Air.

Dreaming pulses

As reasons’ reflection

But vague yet.

Vague and languid,

At edges stalled.

Moistened in sleep,

But not.

But not.

Air.

Piled deep

Down to the stars.

Life sways hanging, drifting.

Trees with their hair

Loose and swaying

Singing, singing,

Down to the starlit voids

Hanging the tidal edges

The endless full innocent darkness.

Air.

The trees shape

Single syllables

Howled whisps of vowels

Finding froth from feeling.

Air

Patterned, pressured, punctured

Parcelled.

Air

Twisted and released,

Spread out and stretching,

Tidal current

The vapours caress

Their gradient glacial moments.

Air

Sun bright now

Shifting shimmering.

It suffers all thought.

Turning about

Returning it to silence.

Air.

Sun-bright now,

Spirit-filled

Song-filled

The tongue of gods

Hungry for this and that.

It will not

It will not.

It will

It will.

Invisible lover of every surface.

Air.

It stretches, it pulses.

Gods are born from air.

They flow in and out,

Grow fists of nothing.

They flow in and out.

Gods born from

The turbulent throbs of air.

Movement shiver shafts.

Silence

Silence.

Bhairav is a well-known Indian raag of the early morning. I have only recently grown to love it and its variations. Perhaps the tense sharps and flats put me off. It has the energy of cool space, of heights, of growing light, of distance, of precise wing-tips, of soaring wings, of the dip and soar of red kites. This is a sort of verbal alap – a slow exploration of the moods and directions of morning air, here in the mountains.

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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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A small breath of wind lifts the mist ‘til more blows in.

Two days, three days frost, has melted

And the birds are in the leaf litter.

The mountain’s voice says

‘Winter is not over yet’

But here in the valleys there is a small respite.

A day or two, perhaps, of gentler thoughts.

The world revolves around us here.

There is lamentation and the groans of fools from afar.

The waves, perceptible and arcane,

Encroach on the plans of contented futures.

But here, for a day or two,

Will be blue calm and the hope

Of buds and roots.

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Heart

HEART

Heart anchored to this land.

No need for more questions.

The slow breath of seasons.

An Ivy road that clings and wanders

About the steep sides of Mynydd Troed.

This voiceless white sky calls

Into a vast unknown.

Three days stand still:

The cold of motionless time.

Take it to heart.

Let the silence of it

Dwell there a while.

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