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Posts Tagged ‘Wales’

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DHRUPAD 8 (honeysuckle)

June, June now.
Elder, elder opens, opens out creamy sky cloud fragrant
and so too they drift drift drift, these hills,
the pale hills the bright hills the sunlit hills the star shadowed waiting hills. Drift slow and slow,
coming green coming all coming again.
Weave and throne song singing softly,
the clouds pile a sky hurray.
A thick slow drift, and the thin
slow rivers and the fast stormy rivers and the warm
sun waters and the honey thick shaded waters.
Green light now, green, and sudden roses
bloomed and falling, purple petals, sudden slow shifts.
High hills rise up and skylarks
and the thirsty climbing beans and vines and peas and bindweed.
And the honeysuckle the honeysuckle
blood red buds and dreaming of sweetness.
Twist and climb. Twist and curl and hold
tight as a baby’s fist
here, we are here,
we are close and tumbled and held and lovely.
All all climbed and stretching and together
and growing tall, tall
into the tall
throbbing skies.

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Dhrupad 6 (May river)

They will fall down into their own rivers, these words these sentences finding their own surface will settle for a familiar winding light in warm beds slowly downwards to their own sighing roaring silence. Though they are not nor ever have been mine to give, you have them now flowing on from this to that a single seamless thread gathered from the highest open grasslands, gathered from just below the sky the slow drip down the vast vast vast drip down of water towards a centre of word, towards a winding tongue a weaving mind weaving sky and sound, skin and sky a story river sky river down to story silver river….

Only there, there, where the people have sunk into the land singing their stone memory bones, grey weathered on ridge shrouded elder clouds, something home death something home small cooing death, nature death smell, cream smooth death mother humming bees smell, humming stars death smell, secret curve woman death star bone smell, life death star death cooking smell. Only where the words have turned to winds and wind to rain, and bracken shields the adder’s tangle in the warm vast moist morning, the vast mist morning of the criss cross and spiral morning, of the tangled spiral adder’s tongues honey soft morning. Only where the red kites wheel and the buzzards on their watching posts watching down the old quiet roads, the rocking cracking moment by moment roads footstep views and sound sound river bird and breeze roads, the sudden view shift roads, the next last corner roads, the lost remembering roads.

Only on the beginningless roads beginning now now again sprung from grass now flowering grass now cowslips now bluebells now now the white sprinkled roads and the naughty weighted scented hawthorn heavy aired hedged about and field threaded and in the shades the holy blue the holy white the holy blood pink campion splatter and the enunciation of curly topped fern fingers finding licking tasting airy edge and warm soft soil and all and a round world edge a round world edge a round sun filled edge honey edged May in lanes and long low spiral lands and lolling loping hills folded around the fingers of the oak oh the old oak uplands upwards old and upwards the silence and psalms of spiral havens daylight to dusk to stars lit to keep off the cold cold space of silence somewhere else somewhere other rivers fall slowly down slowly drift and they will fall down too into their own rivers, these stars bright hiss finding their own surfaces, winding light just as if just as if and the adder’s ridge and the elder’s curve and the bones of morning in the warm beds of May and the mother humming and the vast, the vast the vast

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DHRUPAD 5 (bluebells)

Shimmers so
there,
unlikely unsky
sky,
woven down by green air
in the water washed wood
and the cherry sound
of chiffchaff chiffchaff,
chaffinch, twig twitter song.
Glory, glory, the deepest blue but not,
but violet but not,
but smudged heaven taste beyond eyes,
cell washed deep sound,
a sound even lying on it all,
lying across it all.
A sky blanket sun dipped.
Kingfisher blue, as if,
sudden flash blue, as if,
floating violet pink haze blue.
There
not there.
In passing flicker flicker from
a deep seen somewhere else,
from a silent safe mind springing up
with smiles.
Language unwrapped,
unfolded, spread open,
smoothed
there now, there now,
sun at last
sun at last,
sun, at last!
we shall push on push up
take colour become
come ring sound
and swing down singing
down the slopes,
a tumble bells sighing sound,
swaying dance a deeper dance,
down down the deeper sky,
sunless starless moonless,
a sea sky
footsteps
footsteps
the wooded
wooded
bluebell
way.

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SAPPHIRE

Evening hills
cracked sapphire.

Gods made them so
in the peace of sure weightlessness.

A north wind, though,
that clears the sky

and will make these shorter nights
moon bright and bitter,

will hold the bowing bluebells
in bud a day or two yet.

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DHRUPAD 4 (windy day)

Green rain, green air,
wind cool with doves,
cooing with doves and,
it could be, cuckoos,
it could, it could be cuckoos
between the mother calling
and the lamb’s reply.
A slide down to the sea
is the river task,
the river fast brown rain full
spinning away downstream
daffodils fading, cherry blossom confetti,
bless you, bless you,
and the blackthorn a rimed white now,
a pure white now,
a white that clears and seals the eye, now.
And the surprising green of elm seeds
hanging high and leaning down the road,
wood elm, secret elm, mountain elm.
And a new day ripped with blue,
healed with rain and healed again.
The light and soft
racing the dips and darkened woodlands.
And in the valley it could be a cuckoo,
it could.
And the dip and rise
and screech of swallows’ circumference,
their wheel and compass
the round wind and blue sunlight
and a deeper height to it all now,
a dancing deeper height to it.
Open blue winds,
the opening, the year, the seed.
The brighting day
in this flurrying
wind rush.

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ONLY THE DEAD

Only the dead
Can thrive in heaven.
Let us unravel here
In words and feelings:
This hollow as heavy as lead,
A weight of mists,
A weight of starlight fluttering.
A winding road after rain,
Leading uphill into cloud.

If we can
And if we choose
We shall balance it all with bliss;
Sound that goes beyond hearing,
Beyond the bones of meaning
And the bones of winter.
Sunlight warming closed eyes,
A drift of sheep and birdsong.

The sky is cloudless, silent.
But it will come on to rain later.
Day stretches across fields and hills.
Savour time,
For one day
Time will be no more.

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GHOST POETS OF THE T’ANG

These exiled poets
Lost in cloud
Nothing to do now
Except compose
Haunted verses.
A wash of ink
Smudged with mist
And tears.
The real
And the unreal
Melting away

On their way
To the fields
The peasants glance
Sideways
Through open windows.
The threadbare
Silks, the padded robes,
The soft hands
Of government men.
Gazing out
Painting and poetry
And wistful regret,
Awaiting the whisper
Of city assassins.

Here now, between
the pleasant mountains
Green and deserted,
Viewing the long mists
From picture windows.
Centrally heated,
Supplies by van
From city stores
Who satnav the lanes
And slur the
Names they dare not
Learn to pronounce
( the old language of
Rain and rock and poetry).
Somewhere beautiful
To die
If die we must.
Deserted by children
Who promised to visit
Often, who came once
A long time ago
But prefer somewhere
Where there are shops
And ready entertainments
And motorways
To speed through
Undistracted.
To be kept busy,
To not notice time
Drifting away.
We shall coffee morning,
We shall do our weekly tai chi
Our monthly bingo;
Attempt gardening
Between the showers;
Seek and find some
Contentment,
Like Manawyddan
And Pryderi,
Hunting through derelict lands,
Until that thunderous roar,
That small, relentless whisper
Changes everything
And we slip
Slip from memory,
An ink drawing
Washed away
In the endless
Rains.

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GYLFINIR

(The Curlew)

cool morning.
clouds rise.
the curlew calls.
sunlit
is the new horizon.

damp grasses –
fresh green.
sheep in the fields
curlew on the hill.

inner light.
sun slips through
before the rain.
a distant curlew calls.

melancholy joy.
a pause in the rain.
the curlew’s descending call.

perhaps we shall
be forgiven
perhaps, forgotten:
cuckoo and
curlew
in the empty wood,
the flowering field.
sunlight and
shade
on the distant
mountain.

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A WIDE SUN

Slow cloud
draws the hills.

A drift of warm air takes
the last of the snows.

In deeper valleys green is
no longer an imagining,

And a wide sun
pushes out the days
Into weightless blue evenings.

It is something, now, to float upon,
To hope upon, to gather up and savour.

The fingertips of Spring
parting the valley song

And the woods, a veil of birds,
And a new green day.

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Opening out.
We saw a bright place:
Summer stars, birdsong.
The language of a landscape.

Bright Spring day.
For a moment
Nothing else matters.

Home through snow.
Getting lost –
Other people’s footprints.

Winter trees:
You can see
what they are thinking.
Weighing the memories
of years and seasons.
Squeezed thin
between the bright veins of light
And its decay.

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