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