last update:
19 Sep16
enquiry to
poetry p f
Listen to Ruth reading her poems at The Poetry Archive
poetry favourites:
Welsh Writers
Seren Books
and in the shop…
CD –
“Ruth Bidgood reads a selection of her poetry ”
Sarn Cambria ;
Pamphlet collection –
“Lights”,
Cinnamon Press
collections –
“Land-music / Black Mountains”,
“Above the Forests”
and
“Hearing Voices”,
Cinnamon Press;
“Time Being”
and
“New and Collected Poetry”,
Seren Books;
“Symbols of Plenty”
Canterbury Press
Ruth Bidgood (July 1922-March 2022)
Epynt
I can’t remember the farms.
Forgive me, Cefn y Fedw, Cwm Car, Gwybedog,
all you other houses lost, you phantom fields.
Forgive me for my love of your supplanters,
moulded moorland stripped of husbandry,
narrow road unrolling toward a skyline
of the Beacons, never the same two journeys running,
black and sharp on turbulent sky, enigma glimpsed
through mist, or in high summer a golden promise.
I’ve read the story –
An army’s demands, leaving enforced, false hints
that with war’s end return might come.
Forgive me, Yscir Fawr, Cefn Bryn, Tir-bach,
that your ghosts trouble me so rarely,
that my eyes and ears are jarred so little
by today’s few red flags, peremptory notices,
far-off manikins who might be playing at war.
Forgive me that what I meet
in these desolate miles is an austere
beauty, and almost always, peace.
Ruth Bidgood
in collection Land-music / Black Mountains, 2016,
Cinnamon Press, ISBN 978-1-9108363-5-4
© Copyright of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
site
feedback welcome
