LEAVING LLANGAMMARCH
Who would choose to leave this Llangammarch
Wrapped in birdsong on a warm and sunny morning?
Who would lift their eyes from the glistening waters
Draped with alder shade and grasses?
Throughout the houses it has now the soft hush of loss.
The hollowness of a hollowed name, a rehearsal of memories.
Llangammarch threaded between wood and waters;
An easy confluence neat folded against the green grey heights
of Epynt and its sighing skies, its distances tasting of blue.
Except those who tend the dead ( the small things singing), no one lives on Epynt now.
It is a roofless, empty house, shadowless, and singing winds.
Perhaps it is there our departed go, congregating to watch the unfolding world,
At ease and in peace, soothed by a longer perspective on sorrow and joy.
Who would leave Llangammarch, warm and dreaming?
Those with dreams urgent and golden;
Following the light upstream,
the open skies, the warm winds,
the curlew berating heaven.
A floating world, a breath away.
One breath away.
—
simonhlilly 