As I write, each line reaches for memories
lost, fallen beyond the edge of the world:
kamarupa dwelling in infinity, fading
when my lines do not find them
and my words fail passion and desire.
Eons, lost pasts. Which of them
could dream my frail dream of this
verse? Which, thrown
across the fabric of time, could make
nothing everything?
Because I have seen
such small glory as heaven found
Lit translucent in the wing of a dragonfly serene above the dark pond depths
Lit gold in the sunlit pelt of that one white cat still beneath the tree
Lit in Spring’s faint skeleton of Winter’s fallen leaf
Lit in the fractal eternity of each flake that floats snow down
and know the pain each angel hears
Held in a single seadrop soft splashed on some high rock above the surf
Held in that single grain of sand that shapes the sloping beach or curving dune
Held in the horizon haze that surrounds my coast
Held in that seed on which all life is scribed
Held in the single tear squeezed from the duct
Held in each word locked behind my pen,
know that I shall probably pray that time dreams me more
and in that moment thirst for this man’s illusion and that man’s vision
for I can no longer sleep to sleep
to dream to write
of the mountain or of the desert or of the sea, for the world holds
no words again
1
A story about
an old poet
and his cottage
2
A dream of an old mariner
lost in Wales
adrift on his words
3
A memory of
a young boy
on his maiden voyage
4
A memory of
innocence
lost at sea
5
A line on a chart
between a girl
and loneliness
6
A communion
between an affair
and marriage
7
A vigil by a wife
waves on a beach
memory of a ship’s wake
8
A night on watch
with a ghost
of a girl above the horizon
9
A night at sea
under the southern stars
a sailor dreams of heaven
10
A tear on the cheek of a girl
writing urgently of love
letters unseen for weeks
11
A union of words
sadly disrupted
by world time
12
A memory in the Welsh sky
a poet sees dolphins
in a bow wave of cloud
13
A murmur
between life
and rhyme
14
A dialogue
between time and
loss
15
A line of verse
between loneliness
and memory
16
A reflection of a man sitting
beside a fire
memories in embers
17
A poem about
an old sailor
in his cottage
Dirt!
We were held between the tangled roots of the tall grasses and the fragrant herbs
and, amongst those pale veins that gave them life,
teased by the whispering white threads of the mycelia,
pushed aside by the harsher muscular cords that gave succour
to the bright pomegranate and the fragrant cinnabar,
we were stretched and broken as roots grew and gained power
yet we held their tubers softly in place and felt
the rhizomes spread through our mire.
Water fell and we accommodated it briefly
as it gave succour to our burden,
drained, and left us, dust blown in the winds or
muddied clay, sod that found brief form,
as the waters gathered and flowed,
servant to some greater force, to tumble in rill and stream,
to join mighty rivers, seeking their genesis.
We were the loam left.
An afterthought.
Dust!
We were the stuff of clay, without form beneath so much life:
above us we knew verdant vine, meadowland and forest
flourished in the mists as we—slumbering,
nascent among their umbilicals, feeding their growth, were
diminished by the day’s fierce heat to mere loess,
mere powder from dirt’s dust destined for desert or steppe—knew only
the mighty winds that reduced our substance
until at a dawn the brume returned and held the gusts at bay
and we were one, at peace between the green grasses and the purple thyme.
Then there came one great exhalation
and in that breath power came to our ylem soul.
Amongst
the soggy rotting leaves
or between
the bowed grass blades
thrust
the tips of snowdrop
leaves
Winter white. The cold wind across the fields
spoke only of snow and wearied him
prisoner in the cottage where his impatience yields
no words on the cold and barren purity of the snow
white paper, no words longing for their page longing
.
for their precise moment to mark the dreadful whiteness
that had come with winter’s snow and the ice that followed it,
their precise moment when reality’s niveous brightness
might be dispelled by their generous rush of verse, of
words spilling sliding rhyming across the paper’s snowy prospect
.
A poem partially inspired by the final word in the final volume – Quinx or The Ripper’s Tale – of The Avignon Quintet by Lawrence Durrell.
An interlude is a short piece of writing or acting introduced between parts or acts – initially of miracle or morality plays – or added as a part of surrounding entertainment. When Trystan is published – sometime next year – readers will discover that there are eight interludes that surround and interrupt the main ‘story’ chapters. I will say more about this when the book is published. Meanwhile – between more important posts – here is a poem.
To you, readers, I say
I am no writer –
these words
placed themselves
on my page
to tell a story
To you, writers, I cry
I am no chronicler –
these tales
spun their web
through my mind
to make a memory
To you, poets, I sing
I am no rhymer –
these lines
etched their pattern
on my paper
to form a psalm
To you, who come, I whisper
I am no voice –
these sounds
lift their hymn
from the book
to sing your future
To discern
our place
To commune
To see
beyond our close shadow of death
To focus
my poet mind
I need direction
a qibla
Or some beads to tell
to take refuge from my life:
A candle flame
Only the candle
Flame
Flickering
A journey into quietude
begins
Into that silence
comes tranquillity
And the absence of words
Serenity beyond words:
I become sentient -
conscious of only this moment in the flame of a grain of sand
Of the sun shining through golden autumn trees
Of the clearing mists
dissolving in the valley and above the hills
giving way to rain that fills the sky
so that the branches droop, dripping
as the wind rustles the upper boughs
and drops spatter on the window glass.
Of love
Peace
Perhaps, now, I am no longer physical
But have become a spiritual being
having a human experience
Writing
And in the writing
the words returnOriginally published in Mostly Welsh (Y Lolfa 2019, pp.51-52)
There are about a dozen poems quoted in The Dark Trilogy that are not published in Mostly Welsh. Here is one of them!
The Interface
Books make visible the writer’s soul
Which bleeds its angst by pen:
Spread thin across life’s whited bowl
A thin red stain of madeleineBooks may offer us an author’s eye
That ensnares the reader within its brail
Or should writers light the reader’s sky
And tear apart the shadowy veil?Books will hold the writer’s thought
And bridge the gap twixt pen and readers
A mystic link so carefully wrought
To blazon unicorns among the cedarsThe writer’s flame burns bright with drama
With thanks to Proust, Baudelaire, Auden and di Lampedusa
As ashes from a tortured mind combust
For in the writing there must be karma:
Finding peace in a little heap of livid dust