WIPING THE SLATE CLEAN

Clang echoes clang after clang after clang:

the rockman’s jwmpah pounds a shothole

deep in the angled vein; earth’s hoard is hard

and dense. Black powder is mixed with care,

for metamorphosis begins.

 

Ifor turns from the blast, looks back

to the incline where daymen haul rubble.

Cowjian gripped in one hand, rhys in other,

dust clings to his downy cheeks.

Counting the floors above: twenty-six

ascend within the mountain;

his roofed world seen by candlelight -

chambers beyond reckoning.

From six to six, six days a week -

bar three days annual leave -

there’s thirty, forty years of muscle-ache,

until, like some sneak thief silent,

silicosis steals the lungs.

On the surface Uncle Alun sits,

hunched astride his blocyn hollti,

splitting slabs wrested from their bargen.

The screech of a hunter’s teeth pierces

his insistent chipping rhythm.

When dressed, the slates pile up by size:

singles, doubles, headers small and wide,

likewise ladies broad and narrow.

Then the titled, Countess to Empress -

roofing for rich and poor the same.

Noon. Men withdraw to their caban:

a general removal of flat caps,

place-settling, boot-loosening,

and unwrapping of rations

before their chairman calls order.

Ifor minutes the debate:

his native hand witness

to the brooding brethren.

Fifty-three are suspended;

there’s sixpence a week to win

from mansioned English owners.

The word is strike, solidarity

constant as underground warmth.

 

Charged with hwyl, Sunday chapel

is bursting full; for hours together

in tune with the Minister’s spell.

Or not. Ifor ponders the risk

of cupboarding to make ends meet.

 

I stand. From his waliau gaze out

across the distance: torn hillsides

are blue-grey heaps of sharded waste.

Road fill for MacAlpine. Rain falls

on dark stone, from dark sky. Hiraeth.

iv.2009

SPIRIT OF THE SARD

“He who come from the sea comes to rob.”

Mastery rolls in

unrelenting as the tideless waves:

always someone else’s coast.

Safe harbour once for Carthage,

before Rome planted its grain;

later Mussolini mined

the coal and discontent;

now NATO play their war games here.

This island’s had its usage.

Time piles up in layers:

we look and tread on history

quarried and laid out in stone.

Everywhere rotund remains

mark the Nuraghi’s slow retreat

to Barbagia, the unyielding highlands.

As a snail withdraws into its shell,

so malaria , serfdom, wealth were left behind.

In Arborea, last of the guidicati,

Eleanor codified laws

to endure five hundred years.

Unlike her realm’s resistance,

broken at bloody Sanluri.

Yet your falcon bears her name still.

And free as flight above

is the pretty deceit of a snorkel:

that one swims with fishes.

In their liquid valleys, mountains, forests,

all is crystal definition.

Our tourist vista, framed

by oleander, juniper and myrtle,

seldom has such depth of focus.

vii.2008 (revised vi.2015)

Vignettes a la Ronde

1.

From Autoroute we exit

through silty plains, slowing

to the pace of sunflowers.

Where Man and marsh commune,

once limestone islands

emboss this monk-drained basin.

Here, our journey ends

in pantiled roofs, peeling shutters

and unmade, sun-baked pavement.

2.

Monsieur freewheels the potholed slope -

a single geared, sit-up and beg descent.

The faded polo stripes

and shorts and socks and sandals

worn comme Hulot.

His creased features speak of weather:

“Orages dans le Sud”, he says

showing front-page shots with solemn glee.

Yet fretful, for saplings - parched

and wilting - croak, while Bordeaux floods.

This pitched site, plus simple, more to him

than unretired income:

his stubborn foothold on a walk of life.

Taking a dim view of motorhomes -

“sangsues, pas vrai camping” -

he vows to charge them extra next year.

* * *  

For Saturday evening frites,

Monsieur’s spent all day mending.

Disgruntled, he shakes his grizzled mop -

“Il est panne: rien ne marche” -

an ancient fryer in bits around his feet.

Later, after meticulous checks

of the pool’s pH and chlorine,

Monsieur lingers to observe petanques,

and exchange pleasantries:

We talk of Pineau, Troussepinette,

some vagaries of the Michelin inspectorate,

and how his tomates biologique are ripening.

The clack of boules on dusty gravel

continues under globed lamps.

Unnoticed, Monsieur departs for home

from where, at eleven sharp, our lights go out:

“ Monsieur bon nuit.”

3.

Morning: warm baguettes, jam,

and the smell of bikes lent into rosemary.

The day yawns, stretches out its canvas:

we paint each one, full to its frame,

with paddle-stroke and pedal-turn.

Gnarled pollards edge the patchwork,

squat its banks like old anglers, hollowed out.

Beyond a tumble of purple loosestrife and fallen trunks,

a dagger beak rises through poplars:

hooked and trailing legs are carried out of sight

by huge, deliberate flaps.

Our barque zig-zags through lime tarmac:

the conche’s lush silence disturbed

only by frog-splashed gashes in its duckweed,

an iridescent flash of Kingfisher,

and family disputes over navigation.

Market garden mojettes yield

to sunflowers in their day-glow pomp:

emergent from a dappled maze

we track the levee dividing wet from dry,

wheeling, like kites over treeless meadows,

in search of the next deserted village.

 

4.

Evening: swallows swoop low,

with chittering swerves, to scoop the pool.

The site settles to after-dinner books, card games

or the shake, rattle and roll of dice.

Two plots along, guttural geese honk evensong;

a bat jags through the twilight.

Out at three a.m. with a bladder full of wine,

the Perseids streak luminous to earth

where fireflies, like cigar stubs, flicker at my feet.

Cassiopeia sits due north, her beauty at its zenith,

and Cygnus has flown from east to west 

while I grow old in gazing at such skies.

v.2002 – i.2003