Cwm Chwefru

I left Huet at Llanfihangel

Brynpabuan, under the fronded

red frown of Allt y Clych,

newly risen and cold

in autumn mist,

and followed the lonely, lovely

screech of the hawk, down

to Crossroads and to Chwefru

to meet Price

and Jones

for a walk.

Below us, a flowing fossil,

silurian silver, the river

rushed to leave the cwm

as we breathed in sweet,

sweating mountains

and walked on.

Arguing like dogs we passed by

green-skinned telegraph

poles turned native by darkness

and dampness, past the holy quarry,

past the black oily remains of a

lamb. Past. Limp

plastic wires wound

down the lane, hanged

like lies between each

pole carrying last

century’s civilisation

to the coupé couples

in the holiday.com cottages

further down the rainsoaked cwm.

(Those ones from off, who come

to get away from it all

but who, free in their excruciating exile,

are always forced, eventually

to bring hell with them anyway)

And below, the rock snake,

the cambrian carver, the river

rushed to leave the cwm as we 

three swapped our aunties and uncles,

second cousins and third cousins,

our lovers and wives

and walked on.

Grey squirrels, leaping like lizards,

infested and abused the branches

above our heads; bold brazen Yankee rats,

with miles better PR than the Wicked Welsh

Weasels who hide in the heart

of the glyn’s dour slopes.

On a crag, on Craig Chwefru,  we glimpsed

a rogue, a robber, a runaway

pursued by a dandy with no nose, who

implored the fleet footed fugitive to

“…flee! In English! For Christ’s sake flee!”

Before they both became a single silhouette,

And disappeared over the jutting

sheep’s jaw of a rock, still shouting

about Buffalo Bill and

the Builth Sioux Butcherers.

And below, the amniotic poison,

the sparkling mercury, the river

rushed to leave the cwm as we

three shared stories of lost and stolen

words and cursed and cursed and cursed

and walked on.

We walked on and then I stopped and noted in my book,

“There are no wild animals in Wales”.

“And soon, no wild places”, added Price

“Nor wild men, nor wild women”, said Jones

“Consider me!” suddenly she sang;

the Robin Goch, and we turned like Dafydd Gam

to see her song, hanging bloody on a broken bough,

rebel-red and fierce like a wound.

“Why aren’t I the symbol of Wales?”

We three tied our tongues together and

took our answers from the air,

We are an ancient idea,

an imagined verse. Our myths

exile all words. We have

no need for such

a common song.

Yet she sang, sang, sang.

Still she sang so sweetly it

Broke our stupid hearts.

And below, ancient ancestral,

out of time, the Chwefru,

our feral master,

our heathen sage,

rushed over the rocks

into the next ice age.