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Posts Tagged ‘Wales’

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WATER ALDER WOOD WORD

and still
the waters
still and flow.

wild words
wood tangled
green and shaded.

each of us
each floated pattern
in laid out
sleep and bliss
always all ways
to trenched
trembled seas,

these dreaming
deep pools
dissolving doubt.

dust raised
in sunlit shaft
birdsong and a
diamond smile

life thus lifted,
and flow the cool waters
all the waters, all the waters
blessing cool
and washing clean.

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THE ART OF POETRY

It is myself tumbling over words
God’s engine roaring a gobby throb
Through heart and nerves and up
To drowning tongue and out free
Into virtual sullen air.
Once solid rooted sense now willowherb whisp
And whatever-you-will, blown breezy and rain wetted.
A garden of weed unruly in bitter pale sunset.
More holy are the turning worms
Silent in their utter diligence to earth.
More holy the first few crisped furls of ash
Let go falling to ground melting for future loveliness.
Myrddin out of mind again and railing.
Everywhere the road turns are madmen
And reckless thieves.
Prophets tearing clothes wander footless into fields
And weeping eat the grasses there
For they can do little else.
Then later, carefully in glowing cursive,
Copy out their rantings for a future offspring.
Little despair misinterpreted once again,
An art of poetry, penultimate.

I have been attempting to get a poem together for the local Llanwrtyd Eisteddfod, but I really do not like working to given subject matter. I have, over the course of the last few weeks created bundles of words that are strewn around the subject matter, but none, (or maybe just one), carries the spontaneity and flow of energy I would like. After reading and making slight adjustments to what may be the best of the bunch, this tumbled out by itself ( as it were). I will likely post the Eisteddfod submission later in the month, and maybe a few fragments of the rejected pieces around the same matter before that….or maybe forget the whole thing for a bit.

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NONETHELESS

Words pass through, clothing the heart
clothing a vast mind with minutes and moments.
The view needles, driven down, desiring root or anchor
and an ear or two to echo and echo round.

These crows, sky-ragged, hanging on each corner
waiting the next small eye to glaze a milky stillness
frozen by the glory of another world, now willing to feed
the warm pump of blood in those with beating heart.
These crows know waiting well.

The beautiful road draped around the hills, hardly held
and careless of its edge, floated on the grassy waters
propelled with slow-mouthed sheep tip-toeing
through centuries’ mulch, of wind and mire and dragging mist.
This road knows staying well but going better.

These wraiths, these mummers, these waif-thin travellers-
they do so dress themselves in a passion of centuries
and believe a continuity that failed a millenium ago.
But still, the echoes of it are perfect and enough yet
for a generation or two ( cloud and hill mated
the seed will spill and root, dark and deep in muscle,
the cloud-bank roaring black a captured pulse, a one legged,
one eyed giant clambering the cliff of white thighs,
the howling wind breath of dog fox and his vixen).
We and they know fading and forgetting well.

August now, the thin grasses begin the slide to yellow.
Small birds, smuts in the slate dark wind.
A longer darkness, a longer silence.
Lighter than earth, all the while, these white seeds drift.
A simple skein of wishes, a veil shaping features on nothing.
Words passing through, a slivered door, ghosting towards, nonetheless.

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Midsummer night occluded.

Clouds rent slow and pale light.

One rolled silent tumble

Psalming more for gentle gods.

Rising, falling the hills

And through them threaded

Rising, falling hours of owls.

Weeping wonder

Well gone before done,

A brief flick and dreamer dreaming.

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CAPEL

1
Prayers fledged fluttering hungry to heaven.
Sins numbered, piled up on threadbare Sundays.
Precious is the clear sound of running water in high summer drought.
Clear-throated the hymns from the strong men drunk in praise.
These chapels set dour and grey against the weather God tests them with.
A pungent slow burning peat, this faith of farm work and school mistress.

2
Beyong the roof of human pride
Where Time slows, then stops, then turns to stone
(Mapping out the green bloom, the grey wheel of lichen breath)
Counting down the centuries ’til Eternity
There floats the height of the day and the meat crow dancing:
Poised upon life and death, the line they know so fickle and thin.

3
Drab with the spew of winter and as bitter as Jeremiah
Polished pine slows each musty sunbeam.
Bent arcing benches, each pew a hierarchy strained forward towards the throne,
Concentric jury leaning in to catch spark,
Dazzled is the ignition of the Word.
Burned up in glory or despair
(The cast-iron certainty, the stinging blister of guilt).
Now silence swallowed again, head bowed, the creak of doom summoned.
An enunciated slow pronouncement from other deserts
To a lost people, outnumbered, outmanouvred, dispossessed.
Gather ye in these bleak barns, ye Chosen lost and living yet.
Humbled together, take tea of Christ and God’s new supper.
A thin brew and be thankful for that: there is nothing else.
But better beyond the doors of Time and a hope of warmth and light
And just rewards for a drudge of work in mud and ice and rain,
And a voice of thunder and delight of which the organ sings,
so strong and sweet.

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Notes: Wales is full of Non-Conformist Chapels. Every village had one, two, three, barn-like constructions looming over the lanes. Though they are dour and weatherworn now, the ones that have escaped becoming trendy private houses, can be very impressive, with wonderful wooden interiors. The photographs show the interior of our village chapel that originally dates from the 18th century. Gosen Capel is named after the Land of Goshen in the Nile Delta where the Hebrew tribes were settled so as not to upset the urban Egyptians. There is an irony here with the Old Testament histories and the plight of the rural poor of 18th and 19th century Wales. The egalitarian and popular nature of Methodism addressed the general populations in a way that the established churches had no wish to do, as they were supported and run by the educated and Anglicised gentry.
The ‘height of the day’ and the ‘meat crow’ in the second part are literal translations from the Welsh of the names for skylark and raven.

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DARK MOON RIVER

Dark moon
river runs eyeless.
pools star-filled and silent

then dawn in honey cherry ink
stretched, spun silent,
a planet’s edge mating space

though most are dreaming
so miss the wide breath of beginning

a placid fire before an invention of green
all blue it is, and utter peace,
and the mist, like smoke, hangs upon the hills.

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a landscape for wang wei

the big hills
have gone visiting
the sky

in slanting rain
the green trees
dance and mime

incense rises
curving through all space

the window is a shrine,
an offering to silence

old men suck tea
and talk of distant troubles

i will paint in green
and grey and gold

a solitary bumblebee
wends its way
amongst comfrey
and wormwood.

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Preseli Meditations (Rock Signs)

Eye
Is a palindrome,
As is
Sees.
Voices distant
Speak in tongues
From cracks in rock
Split open by light.

Split open
By light
A heaven swing
Through star roads.
A cloud hymn
And the sing of insects.

The sing of insects
Deep in winter.
Sunlight clicks
Its fingers.
One door opens.
Another closes.

Another closes
Creeps seeps
Through the
Butter of time,
The honey of space.
Dressed in bones
They come
Rolling down
With news
From heaven.

From heaven
Fingers prise
The smallest chink.
An eye blinks
The mirror
Cracked becomes
A door.
Backwards the
Paths lead
Backwards to
The beginning.

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Walking further than intended
A river breeze in the tree tops
And below, streams of birdsong.

The grasses are shooting green
But still in forest shade
The violets in full bloom.

A running stream
A cowslip sky.
At the forest’s edge,
The scent of green.

Deep in the woods
Violets bloom where no-one sees.
Perfected in themselves,
Complete within silence.

Allowed to breathe here
By the forest’s edge
This cowlip sky
A river wind in the treetops.

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CANOL HAF
(Midsummer)

a cowslip sky
above butter mountain.

the white waters whisper-
no rain for a week now.

the summer stars i have all renamed
and are become dear places i have loved.

and the faces that float smiling
as i sleep, shine warm as sunlight
in bee-blessed gardens.

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