Part One - Dan'r fynedd Pedr
There is a place for you here
A position will be found
The slightest trace of pretension
Will be sliced here and fixed in living memory
A suffix to your name
A pinned insect
So that even as you shift
Behind your mask
In some way then changing the mask itself
Your name will not change
She will find a place for you here;
in viva section of the soul
“ you ‘as the look of a Morgan “ she said
“you never had a mamgu down b’ there did you?”. “ You could be a jones', now let me think!
. There’s a lot of strangers in that street now.
Come from chapel 'ave you?”.
“No its not a bible but a video that’s black”
'Get out of the rain Video Bach!'
Under the bus shelter she calculates your life's worth.
Rectangles, cubes, shafts
Of alternating contrast
the night valleys
black-rainbow,
shimmers.
shattered shadows in alley gullies
shafts of grey
shafts of moon light,
blue light,
sodium orange rain hazed light,
diffused light,
reflections in street pools.
Wet light and silent sleeping cloud night
shrouded mountains
hung in the sky.
In endless silence.
The steady pressure of their being
and down rush of their breath
Damp and fern scented.
They hug the valley
'You're not a Mason then?'
A place will be found.
A sudden glare
An open door at number 33
a pink dressing gown
places bottles on the step
Pauses, looks up
Smiles in recognition
And gone
Whispers behind the door, there is a place for you here Between the mountains breasts, in the shadow of its breath,
Within the hearing of its hot
coal heart
you will play your given part.
The village
amber necklace
Floating delicate in the dark
street lights strung along
Grey rock faced terraces
Squeezed between field and river and road
Carved from mountain sides
A thousand feet sheer,
under their cliffs
Edged over with clouds
That descends the slopes
To deliver sheet rain
Eternal rain
Soft rain on hard lives
At night when the buses come
Blazing
With work worn poor dabs back to home...
The pubs swell
And warm life pounds out
loud voices murmerat the street.
Everybody’s business is nobody’s and nobody’s business is everybody’s.
Inside the terrace stones
The blue flash and flamingo pink tv’s flicker behind half drawn curtains
The game show hour
Outside the continuing of the shower crawls to heave haltingly on toward its faltering
last
drop and stops.
The vail splits and the slate roofs reflect the full moon’s scream and drip in silver.
Such mid night silence, such lifting
Of cloud and shinning
Such ink outline brotherhood of Mountain rock, air, flesh and stars, frame the valleys scares.
Part three:
To walk among these scars
To walk the one street city
To climb out and away from its daily grind
And ascend the back of the beast
To look down
At a world away detachedly attached
Each house a small life
A warm shell, a heaven and a prison cell
At number 24 she sits in her back kitchen
dreaming of another life.
At number 25, her children screaming
she dreams of fire but ‘not with him’ she sighs
At number 44 Bryn Haf, a new life of love and passion has begun
In number 33 she packs, 'somewhere, anywhere but here' ‘This is no place for me here’
At 32 Ty Glas, Angelica feeds another spoon and wipes his numb lips.
Between 48 and 50
a small funeral at the capel gates
moves in the slow burn of grief.
The women cling each to each
Grown men shake such agony,
step by step toward the waiting grave
The open absolute
They that yesterday loved
And laughed are gone
Those left bereft
tomorrow and forever
Fall to hate
They make a jewel of it
Seething diamond hate
They learn to
hate God
With all their poor scared hearts.
Here among the scars
the poor harrowed sacred land
Beaten barren by empire,
leaving only blacking dust
I walk the coal top path
As it winds up,
by stone walls,
up toward the ridge
Above the valley,
beyond the trauma of the industrial past
the further up I go
the closer to fate and the Universal will,
The faster I fall from grace in men’s eyes
the closer to Grace I climb
At the tidal cloud line
In the air, wind and winter sun
high here
Wild here
in the Wild West
winding up and out of it all
out of favour
and out of grace
Away from gods chosen few
Here in the other world
High Anwn’s gate the mundane turns magical
So I’m come
To make a last ditch stand
In this ancient druids fort
Like the time before
this time again
Refusing to accept defeat and....
Down below there is a time and a place for me to go
Toward a certain faceless meeting for tea
at number 33.
For all the bad decisions made
All the wrongly chosen turns
The willed foolish acts
The betrayal of love
The impulsive desperation
petty faked rebellions
vengeance thoughtless and rash
All of it,
every second
Burned to cinders
All convictions turned to utter ash
All these paths
Along which I crawled
All led to where I now stand
And I would walk them all again
No matter what my birth had planned
Part Four the end. 1982
By
Some unknown orchestration the clouds
Collapse down Mynedd Pedr,
a maelstrom of wind, hail and steel rain,
diffused form
shattered shape,
Blur of stained grey
Smeared pail
winter green fades
Cascades in volleys
down the valley
buffeting gusts
explosive on rattled windows
Water filled
Torn tormented air.
relentless rain
Everything braces
in the soaking shock and blast
Of it.
Thunder executes thought
time to scramble down,
soaked to the skin,
the cinder path of self
Streaming rain in my hair
In my face
in my eyes
Along the path where
The birch and old Hawthorne blindly bend and howl.
But the mountain
Is obliviousness itself
Until it meets the self
In oblivion.
I Dream of spring
Dream of tomorrow
Taught with anticipation
As if for the first time
nature will swell
and fill the air
with scent and meadow
Nests and insects
Seed and pollen
Blossom spray and hanging berry
The sun itself will turn to sugars in the leaf
the roots will mine the Minerals and place them each to each
in each cell.
A master chemist
and a quantum mechanic.
Shall make what was dead
Live again,
alive again and new
‘I shall resurrect it all’
And turn water sun and soil
Into nectar and nutrition.
the fecundity of the mountain
once more will pour
out
And into
numinous awe.
Behind the door of 44.
Lovers deeply entwine
Here above the village
the immediate Spirit
Parts the storm
and proclaims,
immanence and
transcendence in all frailty.
In a single promise
A single kiss
a glimmer of love
and all of it
In a blink
gone
ethereal lighting flash
eternal timeless delicate
so fragile.
But here it is.
The gossamer God in the rain
She touches my cheek with silk fingers and evaporates the sky!
The storm subsidies
And rumbles grudgingly away
A child at the end of the dripping wood, appears
‘ is this now?’
She asks me open eyed.
is it really now?
or was it then
or will it never
come again?
Will the syntax fall apart
Like some pathetic fallacy
A metaphor of mix
A Simile vivid but not similar
A Literally illiterate life
I have been in the cities
At the court of the mundane king
Been subject to his endless reign
His cultural hegemony of concrete conceit.
and the fallen broken people.
The rich profoundly dead people
All together,
sinking together
all awe stripped away
seeking affirmation of each others hard fought day.
in the gray god
it is never now
but always ever-tomorrow
In the village of the rain
The amber neckless
The green scare
There is place for you
The question is not
who you might be
But what you see
in others
In all your friends
and lovers
At 4.45 pm the Mountain sighs
As the land lord sleeps
Mouth aghast like the moon
His alarm clock muted
will not ring to wake him
His wife walks down
moon light street
Suitecase in hand,
toward a warm waiting car
She Looks over her shoulder
To the moment where she placed
by the kitchen
sink
her wedding
ring
The village, the amber necklace,
hears the dawn
its heroes saints and sinners. will soon wake again
to run the narrative
and take up arms again
To fight and retreat
And bring it on again
struggle, squeeze and ring
the mop again
To clean the floor
To screw an ounce of Magic
From the man made engine
of the idling day
To defeat again
the ancient reign
of the ever present
Samsara of the mundane
To find the one thing
as the dawn lights the fuse of day.
To find a belonging,
To find a place
A centre
Cynefin fyw
To which the primal
soul
Indwells
In all time
Sings the valley
“behold what I can do!
Behold I make all things new!”
