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Posts Tagged ‘Winter’

Scarecrow

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on January 13, 2016| Leave a Comment »

SCARECROW

this
my transparent, liquid window

give us our dreams
our daily dead
sound without meaning
words without end.

sweep this.
collecting debris
for the sake
of some little gravity.

this shaped pattern:
small notion wrapped in upon
ghosted misted identity

forgetting sunsets
to inhabit the dawn,
a superstitious equation
bequeathed a pulse.

lay it down,
lay it all down,
open and dancing
up to the mountains.

this thread now,
this chariot –
broken star fragment
drowned in salt.

lay the fire to the green fields
flesh in new colour,
frost-patterned, cool.
still the eye, the tongue, the demon.
still the angel,
still the urgent bright ones.
still the whispers,
still the memory.

this house perched high,
this sunlit porch
this upturned story
this dewy claxon.

give us our dreams
our daily dead
sound without meaning
words without end.
amen.
—

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Advent

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on December 23, 2015| 6 Comments »

ADVENT

1
A bitter edge.
Two ravens
Smudge motionless air.
A blessing it is
To have breath.

2
The slant of rain
Roars on rooftops again.
The fire, though, burns bright.
A blessing it is
To have breath.

3
A slow dawn.
The hills have yet to return
From their night journeys.

4
Oak’s iron hand.
Black veins
Holding what remains
Of sunlight.

5
A thousand galaxies
In the old man’s beard.
Sudden brightness
On a winter’s path.

6
A knot of dream,
Tangled,
Sinks down into darkness
Still wriggling.

7
Mercury and lead
Are the roads leading to emptiness.
Puddle-edged, empty,
They rise and fall
As if someone
Were watching.

8
Time slows,
Withers and stops.
Solstice.
Only the rain.

A blessing it is
To have breath.

—

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Scribble River

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 15, 2015| Leave a Comment »

SCRIBBLE RIVER

1
The trees bend low,
The hills, open, roar.
The world spins fast
On its way to war.
2
Drenched in
Their own silence.
The hills.
Made cool and
Winged to the sky.
3
Tongue numbed:
The eloquence
Of tumbled waters.
4
Wind harp in melancholy minor
Sweeps, weeps and fades
Across the roofs,
Through the forest.
5
A flint
Struck from verse.
Bright words
Fly splutter
In endless rain.
A breathing on the roof,
Laughter soft in the gutters.
To measure out a little time
Upon this place.
6
By here we wander
Sullied by reason
And the oldest of stories.
Chained and unchained,
Livers pecked-
Our own hungry ambition.
7
We, unbecoming all,
Scatter aimless,
True to undiscovered dream
And the whispers of the greedy dead.
8
Here they speak
One long river of words.
A thrush by the waterside
Cracks a snail on green grey rock.

—

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Llym Awel, Verse 12 improvisations continued.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 26, 2015| Leave a Comment »

So fragile
Is beauty.
That
Is what
Every song
Says.
Fragile as a single breath
On a winter morning:
A mist flowering out
On settled air.
The slightest murmur,
Whisper without word,
A readjustment of time
And space,
A coordination atomic.
A new chord
Tasting the intervals between.

A settlement of sound:
Snow on the ridge edges.
Colour flees through the sky at dawn.
So, then, it grows colder.

There is sound.
There is silence.
There is
The dance of light
Between them.
Some time,
In the small hours,
The fire will die down
And we will dream.

—

Beauty is our food.
We hunt it out
For sweet sustenance.
Gathered, it is
The honey
Of our memories.
Clear and golden,
A long summer evening,
Just before the stars appear.

The moths,
The small things
That delight in edge
And shadow,
Where softness
Calmly billows,
Inviolable.

—

The way
That words fail
Upon sudden,
Harsh beauty.

Hardly moving
This slow, congealing
Blood of dawn.
Congregated, coagulated,
The most slight timbral vibrating,
This metallic air will disengage,
Withdraw to its smirked edge.

Unsupported,
Things fall motionless
To frozen earth,
A whitened mist,
A cloud of ice,
A stutter.

—

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Llym Awel, Verse 12 (part One)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 25, 2015| Leave a Comment »

LLYM AWEL verse 12 Improvisations
(Part One)

Gvenin igogaur, guan gaur adar;
Dit diulith….
Kassulwin kewin brin, coch gwaur.

“Bees shelter in winter quarters, the weak noise of birds;
A bitter day….
The ridge hill cloaked in white, a red dawn.”

The hives silent.
Bees shut up in winter.
So too, the thin voice
Of birds.
A bitter day of it,
So, too, words fail.
Gagged, gaunt,
All declines to murmur.
The hill ridge
Is cloaked in white.
A red dawn.
—

The hunters for gold
In their hollow halls
Gather murmured dreaming.
Summer is far away.
The dawn flowers red,
But still the birds are silent.
—

The beauty of it:
A silent red dawn.
River murmurs under ice.

—

Their laboured breath:
A cold wind sighing
Through bare branches.
The gold of victory
Keeps not cold
From the heart.
They will dream of
Summer and a summer sky,
And the dance of victory
And the boasts of heroes.

—

This verse has the second half of the second line missing. Rather ironic, as one of its main themes is silence, or comparative silence. The inactivity of the hive I have taken to be a metaphor or parallelism for the host of warriors, inactive, in their lord’s hall. Hence, the imagery of hunting for gold, the warrior’s prize, and bees in summer hunting for pollen.

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Verse 11 continued

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on November 14, 2015| 3 Comments »

LLYM AWEL verse 11(part2)

So we pass it round and drink
It round, drink the short day,
Block out the storm, the raging heart,
The dying, trembling roads.

All narrowed, tunnelled in,
The golden liquid cools the breath.
Tunnelled in, proud thunder,
A slap of light, a daybreak.

The circle of the fire:
A harbour, a warm twilight.
We turn inward, away from the wall.
The wild fields of weather
The clatter of cold, the fall of night.

It runs in circles
It runs between dark and light
It runs, unacknowledged, between the company.
Cold are the dark paths to night.
Cold are the long, twisting ways.
No peace in the restless bending treetops.
No rest in the sparkling sky worlds.
Time runs screaming, piercing the light.
All dawns, a false dawn.
A cup never refilled,
Bright the days
That drip and scatter.
The fires gutter and chill.
Senseless and forgetful we sleep,
The few hours of dulled grey,
The storm that is coming.

—

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Llym Awel, Improvisations on verse 11

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on November 10, 2015| Leave a Comment »

LLYM AWEL verse 11( part 1)

Eurtirn am corn, cirn am cluir;
Oer llyri, lluchedic auir;
Bir diwedit, blaen gvit gvir.

“Gold rims about the horn, the horn around the company;
Cold are the paths, full of lightning the sky;
Short is the evening, the tops of the trees are bent.”

Gold runs about its rim,
The horn is passed around the company.
Gold at the edges of the dark day,
Gold tasted on the tongue,
The tongue held silent.
Tangled are the paths and cold they are.

The circle of gold is eloquent but thin,
Shared, passed around, not owned by any.
The short round days.
Fire quenched and bent,
Should have been for the gods only-
As if we could have ever held lightning,
As if we could have gazed unblinking,
Unblinded by its sudden light.

It will burn all who yearn for it,
Burn them black and hollow.
Cold dust they will blow tree-high,
Forgotten, lost in name, one of many,
The bending boughs will mourn.

—

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Winter Song

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 7, 2015| 1 Comment »

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WINTER SONG

This distant raven
Smudges the fields,
A rise and spin and fall
Into waves of rain.

Storm winds sweep away
The last of daylight.
Broken sun skitters the hillsides.

It is a rage, a downing tumble.
The world aches
For good governance.
We, an evil race
If we can sing neither
Praise nor beauty.

The heather has broken,
Black is the wild rock.
Unkept are the fields,
Unkempt the hedges.

The cold phlegm lies deep,
A ghost not to be forgotten.
The neat roads are a lie:
They go nowhere
But another stone womb
Devoid and hollowed of life.

Arrogance barking
Through the night,
A papered-over civility
That masks
The purple bruises
Of pampered bullies.

The lambs of peace
Will bring down wrath,
The ravens know.
There is only hunger,
Food and eater.

Marrow,
The heart of things.
We gnaw the shattered bones
To find the fire.
Peck the eyes
To see tomorrow.

—

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Llym Awel. Verse 10 Improvisations (continued)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 4, 2015| 2 Comments »

LLYM AWEL verse 10 (part2)

3
Snow falls.
Mountains:
A white edge to the world.
Cold, immaculate heaven
Against clouds,
Storm dark.

4
Their distant gradient dusted,
Every dip delineated,
Each crest remarked.
Imperious white they rise,
Impervious to height,
Clearly distant.
Lines of light icing horizons.
Bright as cloud, accumulated,
Tumbled upwards, whip-walled,
A cold sigh, a sharp hawk
In diving dip: the cowering valley.

5
These slim masters of earth,
Pines roar as ocean waves
Unrigged, sail-stowed,
Or broken-topped.
Rolls, the folded swell of soil,
Solid, wind-rocked.
Wet, desert reaches unwalkable,
Unpathed lost fragments.
Summer days torn away.

6
They stand
Against storm
To no good purpose
But stubborn will.
These teetering mast-trees,
Tied to their harbour,
Unfit to roam.
Spearmen huddled in a forest,
Shorn of reason to stand firm,
Yet standing together still.

7
Ghosted flesh gnawed by cold to bone.
We stand tall not from choice- our bitter fate.
Sore is the storm: it seeps within without surcease.
Sliver, shard, we shiver still.
Holding fast – a downward slide.

—-

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Llym Awel. Improvisations on Verse 10 (part1)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on October 24, 2015| Leave a Comment »

LLYM AWEL verse 10

Ottid eiry, guin goror mynit;
Llum guit llog ar mor;
Meccid llvwyr llauer kyghor.

Snow falls, mountains are fringed in white;
These bleak trees: masts on the sea;
A coward has endless excuses.

1
Knowing what we know
What should be done?
We ask ( fearing the answer).

The cold clear cut,
The slow scribbled signature
Of snow.

Timber shattered,
The mast trees weep.
Stripped fingers
They have nothing to say.
The cry, long dry cry of winter.
Glass sea, glass sky,
Broken.

2
What is slight
Sustains us.
Rills and ridge
Croak under snow.

A laughter cough of ice.
Harsh is the wind on the edge of the valley.
No kind words for the hesitant.

—

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—

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