|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Here, even the air is extravagant ― a mercurial light with wedges of purple. Wind chimes through an archway. Small stone figures are crouching in nooks and on steps wet with pink blossom.
A candle flares at the back of a nervous room. Holbein is portraying his wife. Her eyes are heavy. She is weary of breeding alone. Tired of singing the song of dependence she is all sepia. Feels like faded-out paint.
Last night this lake was wind-swept, wind-driven, charged with an energy. Today, quiet and full of brown life. Iron in the hills, they say. Roman iron.
But she knew he’d be drawn to those glittering climes would relish the follies of Gargantua’s court: An age of new dragons, exotic, outlandish a fabulous time to be born.
The small stone figures huddle, seem to be yearning. Bird song – foreign, untranslatable, million-tongued, pours down with the rain.
In Basel years pass; she abandons the portrait, listens to tales of his life and successes, survives on the easy coins sent and his fame. Hears tell of new lovers, a woman in London, their child; is informed of his death. Holbein, her hollow-bone man.
A sudden dark bird in a patch of clear sky reflects on the lake. There are tremors of hidden fish here.
There’s the sense of a river behind a low wall; footsteps on leaf-fall, grey light through the mist. There are hours ahead for the unshed rain. This is an island of pavements and derelict blocks; a low landscape, no colour here. Nothing to do but wait for the lamps to be lit.
Flies in the buttermilk whispers the song. Something is scratching and digs. On the Embankment a stone lion is lost in the fog. His paw is upturned. He begs.
I detest my past and anyone else’s mutters Magritte as he sketches the lion. Thinks about gunfire and troops moving in. Adds a man by the parapet with his back to us; he is staring over the edge. Gives him black wings from the shoulder blades down to the ground. Considers a title: Pea soup, spleen of Paris, Philadelphia, mal du pays… Thickens the fog.
Bats skitter out as old lamps are lit. There are gaps in the masonry and a chill wind. A pigeon lies dead in a scatter of leaves. There are hours ahead for the rain.
Bury you deep my un-lived child bone of my bone. Bind you in ligaments lock you in stone, no lynx or hyena with claws like pain shall defile or dare dig you up again. Be safe in the dark
as you were in me. Shuttered and small as the shrew or vole whose footsteps patter like acorns falling on leaves.
I will lay you for comfort and warmth on the wing of a swan. Lay you down in the earth under the curve of antler and horn. You will not know
the thrusting spear, the blood of killer and boar. You will not know the kiss of a woman heating a man like fire. You will not even know
me, my little lost son or my heart like a hammer stone heavy by you.
There is enough on the earth for everyone’s needs but not enough for everyone’s dreams. - Ghandi
1.
This is my letter Owain, Son of Griffith Son of Vaughan – An open letter, like an open sandwich, Ploughman’s without pickle, a plain man’s bite. And yet it is the trimmings I am drawn to: ‘Owain’ – its stretched-out cry of plaintive vowels, ‘Glyndwr’ – the sound of Wales. It is the smell of sorcery surrounding you, merlin-bird of wild cliffs, and I
a stranger, am intruding
as I intruded then, light years ago, a student in a coffee bar, a place of learning faced in glass, the gulls of Swansea Bay – You would have liked that gateway to the land of song, where boys with pale hair and dirty feet made show of being bards. Here was a town once ravaged by a war where those who called themselves your Sons brought fire against their foes, the purchasers of second homes, where many still had none. ‘Tawe, Tawe, Abertawe’ – here was emotion in a chant, a secret language you, the heir of Princedoms, would have understood.
2.
It started as a fight about a sheep walk – became the full strung bow, the rallying point, with messages on every tree as students from their colleges and farmers from their fields, left it all behind to follow you. They were store lambs marked for death, with bare and bleeding feet they stumbled in a dark and tangled wood. You yourself, a stiff winged heron, flew, they say, beyond the storm, disappeared from fact and into myth.
3.
Now in this jagged-toenail-land we are larks in darkness, lost.
Fangs and eyes from ancient nightmares give us fears of being chosen, being gobbled up ....
.... so that the gleam of a suicide plane delivering death at a pizza-speed becomes our candle to despair.
4.
Shall we say there are too many fences, with too many people perching on them? On one side a field showing freedom, the other a terrorist cell?
Or is it our sausage-blood clotting in greed? Holiday cottage, sheep walk, carving of moons – it is shrinking, Lewelyn’s descendant, our landscape is drying up, bare.
5.
Wales, the roof of the world, green and drenching in rain. Celtic wisdom lies buried in hills, the ghost-swift-moth is a flutter of prayer. Far beyond valleys may be music of harps, at sunset some clouds take on a mythical shape.
We are poising for lift-off between darkness and light. Fold back the layers of landscape, Owain – There may yet be enough on the earth for everyone’s dreams.
|
|
©
of
all poems featured on this site remains with the
poet |
