Amongst
the soggy rotting leaves
or between
the bowed grass blades
thrust
the tips of snowdrop
leaves
Categories
Annual, again
Tag: Poem
Categories
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.
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
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
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 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