UPLANDS (2)
Metres deep, feet, yards even,
Seasons deep, long years,
Scoured, strained, laid down,
A weight of water, a weight of
Tangled sedge-grasses, bones and stone,
Splayed, split on storm skies and roaming mist.
No one lives here long alone.
Bullied and pushed we must lay life on life,
Become entangled, near invisible,
Even to wheeling hawk, even to stoat and marten.
Tangle-rooted, stubborn as a song,
A narrow path wound between dry bluff and impossible wood.
The air here, though, pretends its own freedom.
Not trapped by contour nor disguised
As happy distance.
Pharoah’s prophet on Drigarn Ddu points an accusing finger.
The rules are here, laid out clear on rippled stone.
No wavering, no equivocation, no interpretation.
A bleak love and a hungry wind.
Garn Ddu on fire at sunset, the flashing shout of heather,
Open-mouthed, sinewed dust.
They still shall congregate on the circle of the horizon.
They shall come no nearer but yet beat your heart tender.
The Elders, entranced, caved-up, walled in rubble, unroofed.
Bitter beauty viewed from lascivious valleys: a yearning, there for here,
And here for there.
It is the paradox of the old religion heaped up to the silent sky.
The paradox of breath and flesh.
Leave it be. Become something else.
This impossible gradient burned into the land’s heart.
The desolation that gives us life.
—
