Tag: Poem

Categories
Poetry

Consequences

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

Categories
Poetry

Life Tercets

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

Categories
Poetry

Genesis

Of the Dust of the Ground

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.

Categories
Poetry

Annual, again

Amongst
the soggy rotting leaves
or between
the bowed grass blades
thrust
the tips of snowdrop
leaves

Categories
Poetry

A Winter Poem

Winter White

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.

Categories
Poetry

Interlude

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.

Ashes in a Wilderness

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

Categories
Poetry

Zen Reflexions

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 return

Originally published in Mostly Welsh (Y Lolfa 2019, pp.51-52)

Notes

  • Moliere: “Without knowledge life is no more than a shadow of death”
  • qibla: Spiritual direction  (the direction of Mecca)
  • Zen Master, Hung Chih, writes of serene reflection in which one forgets all words and realizes – is aware only of – Essence.
  • c.f. Blake: Auguries of Innocence: “To see a World in a Grain of Sand…”
  • “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, but…” Generally attributed to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ, a French idealist philosopher and Jesuit priest
Categories
Poetry

An Unpublished Poem

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 madeleine

Books 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 cedars

The writer’s flame burns bright with drama
As ashes from a tortured mind combust
For in the writing there must be karma:
Finding peace in a little heap of livid dust

With thanks to Proust, Baudelaire, Auden and di Lampedusa