Spring
in Llangammarch:
Every house
a nest.
The cool air,
a wash of song;
The river,
a sighing.
Even in rain,
The sun enfolded
bright
In the heads
of daffodils.
—
Posts Tagged ‘Wales’
Spring in Llangammarch
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, landscape, Llangammarch Wells, photography, Poetry, Powys, Sping, Wales on April 2, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Glory Passes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged distance, landscape, mist, mountains, Poetry, silence, spring, thought, Wales on March 25, 2015| Leave a Comment »
GLORY PASSES
All the mountains have walked away.
The hills, stirred themselves and flown.
Nothing remains but clouds and mist.
Rivers fall straight from heaven.
Forests, hushed and silent now, listen.
Distance is the well of Time.
I sit without words, empty,
(Though words themselves
Are hollow flocks).
They graze and move on,
Ineluctable patterns,
A partial view of constellations:
Midnight cloud.
It is a virtue to forget,
To remember and to forget oneself.
A virtue to see what is without compare.
Unremarked, glory passes
As sun and storm on a Spring day.
Jewelled with light the bare branches,
Silver and dark the upland roads.
The sky laughs at the invention of morning,
Rises up as mountains return
Refeshed and glistening,
World without end.
—
A moment or two and Upward
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged landscape, nature, Poetry, spring, Wales on March 13, 2015| Leave a Comment »
A MOMENT OR TWO
Here, the silence moves,
Breathing through the hills.
A slow rotation of light,
A rolling, simple atmosphere,
An eased exchange of airs.
These valley profiles punch through
A rippled horizon of high hills.
Valley roads snaking through
To the clear, white sky.
—
UPWARD
Snow is on the hills again,
But the blackbirds know Spring is here,
Singing through the long, cold rain.
—-
Cloud Valley
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cloud, hills, landscape, mist, Poetry, Wales on February 27, 2015| 2 Comments »
CLOUD VALLEY
Cloud valley,
a cleft of mist
Where trees
breathe white
In smoke drifting
shadow.
A hidden,
silent place,
Its own winds
and weather.
Where long yesterdays
Drip
and linger,
A cushioned,
cultivated moss.
Above a winding
flight of kites,
Wheeling the way
the sun does.
And the shout of ravens,
Stern as castles.
The heart may watch for hours
The roll of dark and light,
The folds of far off land,
But it is in cloud valley
Where spirit longing loiters,
The shroud of matter,
A weightless dance,
Once more revolved,
Tasted.
—
Llym Awel. Verse 6 Improvisations.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ancient poetry, art, cold, gnomic verse, habit, improvisations, landscape, letting go, memory, old age, Poetry, Wales, Welsh language, Winter on February 22, 2015| 1 Comment »
—
6
Ottid eiry, guin aren;
Segur yscuid ar iscuit hen;
Ryauar guint, reuhid dien.
This verse has a beautiful rhythm and some clearly visible rhymes. The last word on each line rhymes ( aren, hen, dien), bringing a clear finality to the clipped imagery. The second line emphasises internal ‘s’ sounds and a sonic and semantic similarity between ‘yscuid’ (shield) and ‘iscuit’ ( shoulder). The third line rolls with repeated ‘r’s. ( ryauar, reuhid).
A fairly literal translation is:
‘Falling snow, white hoar-frost;
An idle shield on an old man’s shoulder;
Very great wind, grass freezes.’
The second line may have been a well-known epithet regarding uselessness, appropriateness, wasted effort or similar. Whatever it is alluding to, there is a clear contrast and comparison between the external conditions of winter and the frailty or limitations of humans.
A shield on
An old man’s
Shoulder is a
Useless weight.
This battle lost:
Blood freezes,
Hair whitens.
A rattling breath,
Needle cold in
The lungs.
Cold wind scythes
The land, all falls
Cold and motionless.
A shroud of memory shields the real.
A heavy weight is its covering.
A welcome numbness dulls each sharp edge.
White is the weight of snow,
White the beard of frost.
White the hair, white the vision.
White the mountain shield above the mist.
Heavy and lame the old man’s hand.
Dead weight the shouldered shield.
Neither weapon nor defence,
No comfort, but an accretion of habit,
Laden down, a bitter burden.
A cloak, a blanket would better serve.
The only blanket is snow.
The only battle, against cold.
The one breath, a wild wind
Turning grass to steel.
A bitter blade of winter
On bitter blades of grass.
—
Down the Valley and Back
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged day trip, February, Heart of Wales railway, journey, landscape, River Towey, Swansea, Wales on February 19, 2015| 2 Comments »
DOWN THE VALLEY AND BACK
The Towey practices its slow, bright curves.
From a distance watch indulgent, guiding hills.
Coaxed to soft mudded shore, the quilted morning
And a pearly sea, we are a downward drift, and aimless.
Caught up in salt breeze, its notions taught by brick cliffed roads,
The red deserted, bleak-eyed, stuttered cities,
Crouched and stripped of worth and hard work,
Neutered by bigger plans, a thrombosis of roadworks.
Unformed, uniformed, scrubbed up, led away
To an anaesthetised future, one size fits all, a shabby lie.
—
The world is bone and snowdrops
A sketched slope of towsled brown.
Fields pressed down and drowned in pools,
Mired and marred.
Scribed by hawk the white grey sky,
A scatter for crows.
—
The Towey dives back
To its deep, delved loins,
An upper silence reconstituted
And holy, disembodied,
Become mist and dew,
An older language,
Petalled lilt,
A catalogue of sighing valleys,
Wooded oak and ash,
Forgiving and lean,
Slowly choired and gathering voice.
Skywards ( the distant sunlit views),
Scrubbed of green, a whiter shade,
The rain-washed road.
—
Imbolc Eve
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cold, February, Imbolc, landscape, light, Poetry, quarter day, Wales, Winter on February 2, 2015| 2 Comments »
Imbolc Eve
The barking of dogs.
Hills white as sheep, as arched, as silent.
God’s simple smile is the morning sun.
A full moon pregnant with light, last night,
And always the river and a promise of birdsong.
The red dogwood, the orange willow
All blameless and bright.
We shall see, it seems, another Spring
Lean by the fireside, thin in the frosted mornings.
Shivered water, vacant sky.
Day begins with dusk, a folding in of light.
Sheltered in byre and sleep.
A new breath in before a sigh and singing white.
Dry old pine cracks and roars.
We must wait a while for bones to warm.
Faces searched for, no longer seen,
Lost along the long stretched roads.
Thin is the light, pale as primrose.
—
Llym Awel, verse 4 improvisations
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ancient Welsh verse, archaic language, art, black and white print, cold, gnomic verse, hunger, ice, improvisation, landscape, Poetry, varaition, Wales, Winter on January 16, 2015| Leave a Comment »
LLYM AWEL. Verse 4. Improvisations.
Oer gwely pisscaud ugkisscaud iaen;
Cul hit, caun barywhaud;
Birr diuedit, guit gvyrhaud.
“Fishes’ cold bed, ice sheet a shelter;
Thin stag, bearded grass;
Short day’s end, trees bent.”
1
Cold world.
Sheet ice
A shelter for fish.
2
Ice sheets:
A shelter for fish.
This cold world.
3
Cold world, below ice
The slow fishes shelter.
Gaunt and haggard
Is the stag stumbling thin
Amongst tough tufts,
The grass tussocks stubble.
Day ends sharply.
Short the light
Slewed to darkness.
Not heat nor light enough,
The trees tired
And weep bent.
4
No delight the meagre light
Cropped sunlight,
A short curtail
Sudden day’s ending.
5
Sheet of ice:
At least a cold shelter,
A cold bed for fish,
Safe and slow
Beneath a sleep drift,
A flick, a dark, viscous world.
Above, we turn grey,
Bent thin and fade.
No light,
Heavy the bowed trees
Bent boughs
Thin branches bob
And the stag,still,
Gaunt in grey grasses.
6
No heart to linger on
Bent trees at day’s end.
Stuttered the stag, shrugged thin,
Here and there
Between stubbled grey grasses.
No heart, the trees bent over.
7
No heart left,
The dark trees bend heavy, bowed down.
The matted grasses,
Neither food nor bed,
The thin stag wanders through a starved,
Sudden end to the day.
8
Starved, the thin day fails fast.
No heart, the trees bow heavy.
Grey, stubbled grasses,
No food, nor shelter-
The thin stag stands lost
At failing light.
At least the fish beneath the ice
Find shelter, a cold bed
Of sorts.
9
Cold bed.
Day dims.
Under ice, the river flows.
Cold bed, slow fishes shelter.
Cold bed, but not for the thin stag.
Grey the grasses, matted wan.
Day light gutters,
No heart, trees bend down.
10
Thinned streams divided
A guttering light
Sound of water under ice,
A cold bed laid over all.
Ice sheet, a withering away.
Motionless
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, drawing, night, Poetry, silence, Wales, Winter on January 12, 2015| 2 Comments »
1
In motionless dark shivered with starlight
A low roar not from road nor wind.
Ten thousand firs in stillness stirring,
Twined convocation a thousand valley oaks
Or little river Dulais its rippled bed piled up
Become two miles accumulated rush.
Or whispered leaving souls rising, losing weight,
Drawn towards new light, free, tumbling
Between branch and bough and cold airs
2
Scoured hollow the heart, diminished in each small death.
Close by the hedge an old dog lain below frosted ground
The weight of winter, time worn thin.
3
Night sky frozen cold
Stuttered shivered stars
Worn thin, restless
Llym awel. Verse 5 improvisations.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged action, ancient Welsh verse, art, block print design, commentary, improvisations, landscape, peace, Poetry, snow, the world, Wales, war, Welsh language, Winter on February 11, 2015| 4 Comments »
LLYM AWEL verse 5 Improvisations.
Ottid eiry, guin y cnes;
Nid a kedwir oè neges;
Oer llinneu, eu llyu heb tes.
“Falls the snow, a white covering;
Warriors shun their tasks.
Cold are the lakes, their colour without warmth.”
Each line ends with a long hissing sibilance, the fall of snow, the melt as cold hits warm. The slightly longer last line elaborates the terse imagery and is a lack, draining motion and warmth from the reader’s mind.
The description of ‘warriors’ could be ironic. How strong and brave are they really, who refuse to go out in the snow? Or, in another view, the snow can vanquish even the bold warrior with its implacable purpose.
—
So falls and falls the snow.
White covers all, all senses white.
No colour for the sight,
No sound nor note to the ear,
All feeling numbed, no warmth here for heart.
The stalwart shrink, the warriors shirk,
The brave turn away, tasks undone.
Huddled small to the fire, faces inward.
For the lakes stretch vast and cold.
Their colour is death and grey pallor,
A wan weight the white drift sinks to.
Extirpated, extinguished, cold on cold.
Drained is the heat of war,
We are rendered aimless,
Lost to thoughtless staring peace.
We fall to not doing,
A sin for man whose fuse
Runs short and hot.
Severed, spun back, reeled in.
Conquered by an easy drift
And silent fall –
A world unbudged,
Resolute in is.
A cold refusal.
A cold covering.
—
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