Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, awareness, bodiless, cloud, Freedom, light, Poetry, spirit on January 18, 2019| Leave a Comment »
LUMINOUS
Luminous ghosts
in translucent
birdsong mornings.
Old friends
invisible
and dancing.
We will have forgotten everything,
( memory
being the engine
of eternal
destruction).
Magnanimous
in all things,
Utterly laughing,
missing nothing.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ancestral energies, bard, cosmology, deep mind, language, Poetry, Sound, spontaneous arising, Taliesin on January 13, 2019| 5 Comments »
–
SINTERED VOICES (DARK MATTER SPEAKS)
the river cracked open
becomes starry space
So many words it is a wonder that some peel through the razor noise intact
Not feathered limping, severed spluttering, gasping airless, a stupid music.
the void between emotions:
a valley wind that rolls stones
The howl continuous so familiar, the driver of conscientious actions.
Our names rumbling in the caverns of our ever drunken blood.
if the river runs silent
is it no longer a river?
Fearing silence most of all, we dress daily in chatter
Asking only that our dreams too have electric constancy.
listen, you mute guardians:
i will sing all your names
Oh, Enkidu, striding across tidy fields of tamed constraint
I shall kill you, too, though I love you more than life itself.
there are footprints on the moon
the dust of other lives, sighing
Taliesin, Taliesin, you burst from your womb-bag
Loud and shimmering. If you were not so beautiful
It would have been your tomb.
the silent centre of this land,
where is the end of all things
If you were not such a tricky lad
You would still be sitting next to inpenetrable darkness.
when there is knowledge
you shall be struck dumb
Yet here still you caper in circles around the utter void
Flapping your tongue and pulling faces.
all words, the debris
of other’s errors
all the masters have left us
as if they never were
fading petals pressed
between stained pages
an unexpected lightness
of forgetting why and how
this river, more song and sense
than a thousand nations
this tree, most eloquent
in its most eloquent, swaying silences
raven prophecy
whirlwind visions
the cataracts of unstitched minds
save us from all reasonable madness
we are adrift
on seas of fire,
and hungry,
so hungry, now.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, landscape photography, Mynyddoedd Cambrian Mountains, near Solstice, Poetry, Wales, wind and rain, winter day on December 20, 2018| 4 Comments »
COLD LAKE DAY
Rust red are the fingertips
Of the dead, scraping at the edges
Of the day. They shall seek to admit
Just a little more light, a little more
Where the hills hesitate then vanish
(They are remembering the very
Oldest of names, hollowed as tombs,
Frost-bright, distant).
In storm wind
Trees and crows sing dancing. Endless
Fields the sheep wait patiently,
Wait patiently turned away from rain.
It is a hard day hung upon
The crosstide of the seasons.
Brief and battered, a smudged world
The colour of old dried blood and bruises,
The colour of steel and verdigris,
Of sodden soil and seed slumber.
A wind ripped thing pinched with rain.
Sorrow is a cold lake in the mountains,
A grey heron waiting to feed.
Joy is a cold lake in the mountains,
A grey heron waiting to feed.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, Basho, Buddha, December light, landscape photography, Li Po, Poetry, stillness, Wales, Wang Wei, weather on December 15, 2018| 4 Comments »
MOTIONLESS
storm grey, the hills crackle.
intense, the colour of the day,
but still the trees catch flecks
of sudden golden light.
and a hum from the distant town.
Wang Wei sits motionless;
Li Po walks through his own eyes
into the landscape;
Basho hunts for a word
that carries silence;
Chuang Tzu remembers, laughs,
forgets again, laughs;
Buddha puts on a kettle for tea.
the day is the same as any other day-
a jewelled and a fragrant passing.
but few will notice even that.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, bardic lands, geography, landscape, landscape photography, Mynydd Epynt, myth, Poetry, presence, Wales on December 12, 2018| Leave a Comment »
—
CWM DWFNANT (2)
(Our geography)
It does not dwell here
It does not stay.
Coming and going in mists
Dissolved to spirit
Absently haunting
The green valley quiet.
Its wings are white shadows
Milk dropped in pools
A cleft, a demure device,
Dark and luscious mystery
Hovered near madness
Far too far from reasonable reasons.
It dwells otherwise, a dark language
Spoken backwards.
Returning time to itself,
A rotating quern of years and miles.
A mighty sign at the corner of the eye.
Blessings to the world-weary
That strip the meat back to bone,
Break the bone to feed on sweet hidden marrow.
The lick of mist, the lick of its still wrist,
Far-flung, a throat of words
Pushed back deep into the hills.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bardic poetry, Haiku-ish, inspiration, landscape, language, Poetry, Taliesin verses, transmission of ideas, Wales, weather, Welsh language on December 2, 2018| 6 Comments »
–
SOIL OF A NEW HEAVEN
The bare trees bend.
Birds bob and float –
Words of a haiku
Searching for a place to rest.
A single beam of sunlight tracks the valley floor
From a sliding sky-pool of bright gold.
The last few leaves have fled
And there will soon be rain.
A fragrant savage despair –
Like love, but not love.
A bitter yew red dust wedded
To ash and water,
Sprinked jet, sprinkled amber.
A language hugged and big as mountains.
The words of Taliesin sucked in through eyes,
Turned, fermenting in a cauldron heart.
Spat out in a limping century,
Adrift in baseless magic,
Amongst debris of another false economy.
Strike this hard sky-grey flint until the sparks fly –
Then the river words shall flow torrenting
Pulled by a centre true and weighty:
Inescapable earth, the spinning fort
Where all yarns are woven up, mataté and mill.
We shall be ground yet,
Ground down and ground up.
We shall become grist and whispers in the ears of playing children
Who do not know anything of us, not names nor actions,
But threaded on the same hopes,
The lilt of a language as natural as falling asleep.
–
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged geography, Irfon Valley, landscape, Mynydd Epynt, photography, Poetry, Wales on November 26, 2018| Leave a Comment »
OUR GEOGRAPHY – CWM DWFNANT
It falls from other airs, some other whispers, other, other cries:
The echoed uplands out of sight that push the clouds
Where the ravens reach.
It wriggles itself fast into its folds,
carved back, a groove deep and dark,
slanted in forest and tumbled stone.
The road spins around it, a snake’s hiss,
slick and narrow, and the racing waters beneath it.
Its name is Stream from the Abyss, from the Deep,
from the Resounding Deep.
And it is loved by cloud so
And loved by mist so.
They cling to and nourish themselves there.
They are born there and are raised there.
Mysterious as poetry, its waters race down
From their hidden places, bright and ice cold,
stirred by shadows from worlds above and worlds below.
Cwm Dwfnant, a mouth that utters,
An eye that gazes heavy-lidded,
vision crowded,
Dream-wrapped.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged alap, Autumn, dhrupad, forests, landscape photography, Poetry, river, Wales, wind on November 21, 2018| 3 Comments »
DHRUPAD 19 (this soil)
Through miles of forest a river wind whispers:
The songs of the living and the dead that they have learned from each other.
There is nothing less than this, there is nothing greater:
This sullen holy soil.
Slow river wind whispers
This sullen holy soil
Sustains us
The hills have dreamed wings and flown away.
In worlds of mist what sustains us now but hope and waiting?
Hiraeth – the dream of what never was and that always has been.
This sullen, holy soil.
This moment, as close to perfection as it is possible to be.
Belonging with nowhere to go, nothing needed, nothing missed.
Home, rested and whole.
This sullen, holy soil.
It weaves and weaves
winds about and strings thread shudders the miles
miles miles of wood and forest pulls gently the surface
the hearts the songs shuddered shuddered soft as bells soft as
as silk bells slipping away away to night valleys slipping down and away
a smooth silk whispering sigh along the long miles all gathered in the spiral here of space and now.
The shh shh of the last breaths of all things
and the first breath quiet
quite the first breaths small tentative but growing growing and pouring
into the world’s bowl. The world’s bowl empty and full resounding resounding the seasons’ reach the soil the soil the layered blanketing dreaming soil.
Slow so it moves so,
slow it moves, slow and low it sounds flow
low flow through it ought it ought reach out reach in through all sliver things flick and swing
rhythm of rock and rime weed water and waste
stretching out out rough roughcast hewn high and heavenwards
threaded the stars path thread the suns light thread the moon as it passes here and here the waters edge the glister spark cold and dancing light.
A day unclothed unclothed and silent
gone on the old paths beyond beyond the point of point and edge
bliss burdened lip silent
bliss stretched out sightless and white holy white formed and vast vast comforted
nothing nothing vast hills of nothing
memorise that word that word what was that word?
Yes yes it was is wordless
heart filled bowl sky empty word yearning still still ever
for ever still a day word a dawn word a starfilled night word a river rush whisper word a world word a world word a world
here this this word now now now word hissing the silence long miles word word feather soft and silk stretched smoothed arched word.
This this speaks the soil.
This how now is says the soil.
Sound full fall found soil. This now, here.
This sullen holy soil.
—
