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Posts Tagged ‘Wales’

Knife Moon

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 7, 2014| 2 Comments »

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KNIFE MOON

In the dark hills
Sons and daughters
Are learning how to kill,
Accurate remorselessness,
The wages of sin.

Down in the valleys
Translucent owls
Kill with God’s own
Gentle hand, guiltless
Down the hedgerows.

A knife moon glimmers,
Clouds severed
On a southern wind.

Out in the whispering,
Rainbow dark
The ghosts of shepherds,
Faithful dogs by their sides,
Long for the drifting flocks,
The steady roll of seasons.

Above the old forge,
The blacksmith’s arms
Aching with joy.
He dreams his cherry-red children,
A quenching thrust,
The soft pink blushing-
His sigh and smiling wife.

The warmth of our blood
We suck from the past.
Our heartbeat, passed on,
Down from when
Her eyes first opened.
We should be content
To simply sing our song
Then wait in silence,
Comforted.

Rain, again, on the glass.
Mist clings to the roots of hills.
The larch, tousled, twisted gold, leaning.
The grasses pale.

Warmth and good memory –
The past, our sweetest water.
A moderation for cold and bitter fires,
The burnished lies and stolen beauty.

—-

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All Roads

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on November 3, 2014| 4 Comments »

From our door
The river we see
Is named ‘river’.
The mountain on the horizon
Is ‘mountain’.
But the woods,
The woods,
Are named from whispers,
And the farms
From grief and joy.

Belonging
Is not a gift
Nor a right.
It lives in an open heart
Free from reasons
And excuses.

The old stag oak
Now wears a crown of gold,
The ash and alder wear
Empty sky.

All roads arrow straight,
But for their bends.
All hills are green
From a certain distance.

The rivers run full
After a night’s rain
And the sun is stretched
And etched with rainbows.

There is not a promise
That it cannot be forgotten.
There is not a day
That cannot be glorious.

—

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Valley Road

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on October 29, 2014| 4 Comments »

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VALLEY ROAD

Hard against the hill
Is the shining snake road,
A year of seasons in its moods.

By the river’s wide roll it begins.
From sheep and fields and farms it rises.
Past the flat-capped shepherds, tight
Behind their wheels,
Through mud and puddles up, and corners
Rising to the sky, the open forbidden hills.
(A view of storm mountains, pearled
Valleys ploughed with mist and rainbows).

Down and round again, shuttled roads.
The forest’s lip, dark and curved,
With roaring streams and dappled.
Oak valleys pooled below, copper gold,
Horned, delighted.
A cast of rain thrown down
And forgotten.

The wilds of cloud and tussock,
Then down, down to the surf green,
To the familial names, to the crossed roads,
The straight paths.
To the door, our home in the dear silence.
The tall ashes pale now and yellowed
Falling one by one, as if counting,
As if counting.

___

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Those Distant Hillsides

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 25, 2014| 4 Comments »

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Those distant hillsides,
They are not velvet, not green,
But bog and rock, sweat steep
For all but ravens
(Whose feathers we might wish for,
For straight as an arrow, for
Wind carried swift joy,
For the soar of it, for the wide,
Open cry of it, for exultance,
For freedom from sins).
But down here, wind-sheltered,
Small, feasting on cold hopes,
Yearning for mist smoked valleys.

Did they watch from alder carrs
The washer girls, raw red hands
And tearful eyes, arching backs
And mournful, moaning songs?
Did they feel the Lord swell within them,
Those saints forbidden their fruits,
Wilderness dazed, sharp chinned,
Spear-eyed witnesses?

So many brave boys borne away,
Cudgeled and shivered in blood.
So many unborn, covered in autumn leaves,
And wept over.
So many promises split, broken open
(Nothing but spit and spite remaining).
So many reasons to slide into silence
Hoping for a glorious trumpet
And ’til then, peace.

Of the earth.
They are all of the earth
And know it not,
Or birch their blessings
For want of wit and a little love.

The pines roar
But bear no anger.
The pines cry
But have no sadness.
The rain sweeps down across the valley.
Leaves fall, air becomes sweetly bitter.
There is no blame, should you stay,
Should you watch.
Everything will seem as it is:
Sun through mist, a mellow round passing.

We shall melt as we are gathered together.
Melt and become another again.
One or two words (only) to pass through
The narrow straits of a few years,
Before they too will become singing silence.

This melancholy is a cloak for deeper joy.
This deeper joy, a cloak for melancholy.
All notes sung before the throne,
Chords of major and minor,
Diminished, augmented.

—

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Invitation

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on October 23, 2014| 3 Comments »

INVITATION

Come, come whilst the woods are green and golden.
Days crumble and fall, a burnished bracken,
A tremble of cobwebs.
They tumble and cascade, ripened and rotten,
A glorious ferment, a willed and wanted collapse.

The roof-tops in the forest,
Moss covered, dripping:
A kind of amicable silence,
A shared solitude
Threaded with birdsong.

Our scars, our pains, show
How we have become ourselves.
They are the maps that have brought us here.
In these pools of silence
Put them aside, fall, forget.

Come into cloud silences, the tumbling breezes.
In early morning, a slow drifting time,
The calligraphy of bats above the feeding sheep.
Where distance comes and goes,
The river’s voice everywhere and nowhere.
The long, pink dawn stretching low,
Rolled out on bird wings,
The green gold of valley oaks.

Come, before the days grow too short,
Before the fords deepen and run so fast.
The still soft light of woodland,
Bramble, bracken, willowherb that browns and thins.
And the dead risen up in their Sunday hats:
They sit in circles and talk endlessly
Of the past that we are become.

Come if you are homesick for woodsmoke,
For a slow, unwinding road,
A symphony of edges,
A breathed rhythm,
An enfoldment, a rapture,
An end and a beginning of stories.
A little time away.
A time given back to the world.
To be unnoticed, camoflaged, melted,
Drowned sweetly, the waves of autumn.

—

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Cefn Gorwydd

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on October 20, 2014| Leave a Comment »

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Cefn Gorwydd ( pronounced something like ‘kev’n guroo eth’ ) is the hamlet where we now live. It is strung along a high ridge between two ranges of upland : old mountains- some of the oldest in the world- the Cambrians and the Eppynt, once home to druid saints and radical preachers…

CEFN GORWYDD

Here we all are, eight in a row
Sight pinned to one view.
Welcomed by distance
Absorbed, belonged, threaded in.
Suspended in swift airs,
Slowly turned, become diaphanous in thought.

Vague only to the roaring loggers
Mumbling down to valley woods,
Vague to the laboured city breath.
Worn thin and cherished
On the sight of light and land,
On the crisp edge and whispered mists.

Folded in and waiting.
The mountains’ round names
Seeping into stilled minds,
Burned purple, stained grey, rubbed in gold.
The layered edge a lilting song
A yearn for valleys curling north.

We are named, but little, a scattered thing
Tumbled together by this or that.
Laid out in a neat line
Patted down, a pattern of years.
We become monastic, an inward road.
Going and returning slow step by step
Between a fuller season
And a perfect prayer.

—

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RIVER FULL

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 9, 2014| 4 Comments »

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1
River full and woodsmoke

Days now, dark and fast as water
Flickering as night thunder

The houses and we shall huddle
Against the black slant of rain
Against the towering, swooping clouds.

Settling in the drift of slow, golden leaves
The bitter bite of brightest bramble
Aspen leaves, their last long laughter.

In the silver firs, on the church tower,
Jackdaws chafe and circle chatter
Wind skirls dancing, wet skirts slapping.

—

2
These mountains, worn low
Settled down, but content,
(As humans could never be),
Folded arms, their valley breasts.
A sharp-eyed, smiling mam,
Neat pinny fields, indulged with sheep.

—

3
I ride again the poetry road along a ridge of weather.
Words hovering, red and lithe as kite tail feathers
Tasting wet, west winds.
Hope and ambition, a stiff field thistle
Lasting out the slow rot to winter.
Wood will bend, sedge stand stiff,
A hard chew, a gristle is this cold tune.
Worn thin, the leaves rattle, a clatter of bones.
Death’s feet dancing to keep himself
Warm for hedgerow work.
Ghost cries of fox down in the valley wood
Disturbing warm-sided farm dogs, a howling choir.
Night and day, a scatter of starlight,
A tumble of rain.

—

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With the Yews of Myddfai

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on October 5, 2014| 3 Comments »

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On the edge of the Brecon Beacons in mid Wales, Myddfai has long been associated with traditional herbal medicines. The story goes that a young farmer in the 13th c. was passing by small lake in the mountains above the village and fell in love with a fairy girl, the Lady of the Lake. Their descendents were renowned for centuries as herbalists. The line died out in the 18th century and are buried in Myddfai churchyard.

WITH THE YEWS OF MYDDFAI

Walking amongst the dead,
With the yews of Myddfai,
(And are we not always with them?
The left and the lost,
As they are with us always,
Whispers breathing cool).
Ground ivy sweet underfoot,
Plantain fragrant above their heads,
The soft, springing grasses.

Taken up, become trees,
Corded limb and leaf.
Holly, cherry, elder all
And the certain hope of yew,
Candle eternal, resurrected
On cross-beams of utter time.

Trees of blood, names forgot
Yet the throb of heart and cell
Pushing out from one likeness
Into a congregation of small sacraments,
(A blessing of toes and fingers
And round, pursed mouths,
An O, a cup, a small, red, sweet seed).

Trees of name and trees of memory.
A date of birth and a date of decease,
Only a short, curved line between
To measure each coming and going.
A start and an end,
A retrieval of mythology,
A reinterpretation of dreaming.
Thin lines of light,
Delicate mycelial wanderings,
Sole nutrient of futures
In sunless soil and sinless light.

A tangled commonwealth,
A last, shared supper.
The weeds of healing
Melting and rising upwards.
In late sun, (October now),
The wood is warm to touch.
Take time,
We say,
But they leave time alone
And live beyond our means.
We, with borrowed flesh and borrowed light,
Who give it all back
(Willing or unwilling),
To be born again,
To be built into another time,
Another place.
Vessels pouring into vessels,
A fall into grace.

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Little Llangammarch

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 1, 2014| 8 Comments »

LITTLE LLANGAMMARCH

Little Llangammarch under wood and under hill.
Not quite awake, not quite asleep,
Dreaming as leaves drift down.
One road, more or less, one shop, one bar, one hall,
A church, a chapel or two.
Time each day measured by two trains north, two trains south.

Toes wriggling always in Irfon and Cammarch,
(Where the two are met and knitted, a feathered mating).
Root or rock, I cannot say for sure.
This stone sheds syllables in flakes,
Prayers slurred, folded, forgot.
This root, iron red, waves wrapped,
Unworn, unmoved, on the hill above,
A saint’s house, stilled glory, skybound.

The swoop and quiver of the red kite’s call.
Shade-huddled sheep, the quiet of the field.
The past it grows thinner by the year
Lost for words, the long losing of names,
The who and where, the why weeded over,
The hero’s house, a longed-for truth
Scattered in byre and farmyard.

Between the open-eyed houses
and the river, still and low as glass,
Come tumbling flocks from the fields,
Down between the cars a bleating tide,
Chivvied, the bobbing, weaving dogs behind.

It hovers: the mountain silence.
They come and go of their own accord,
Leaving clouds and mist for a while, for a while,
Between what is left unsaid
And the slow rain.

Here below, where woodpeckers cling statuesque
and jackdaws skid and race
Like kids in playgrounds, cops and robbers,
Shootout at noon.
Here, in the fields again
The sheep wander as numerous as stars and as white.
The wind blows colour and light,
To and from the bluffs of Abergwesyn.
The rolling darkness, the quiet night descending
From the deep well of Cwm Graig Ddu.

—

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Brecon Cathedral Yew Wood

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on September 29, 2014| 3 Comments »

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BRECON CATHEDRAL YEW WOOD

Dappled, the dead sleep
A slow, chimed crumbling.
A choir, a roof, are these yews.
Riven and sundered, tied back and bound,
Reworked, ribbed, buttressed.
They stand between the leaning,
Between the soaring: the lime,
The cedar, archangel sequoia –
All elders singing before the throne.
A hymn of jackdaw and blackbirds,
An antiphon of ivy dust.
Time riding heavenwards by degree,
Folded and sealed,
A shrouded, deeper silence.

—

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