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.
