The Small Stone Mill

by Dafydd Hughes Lewis, posted in Journeys in Time

(Ireland, in the Year of Our Lord 1649) 

The sun was low when we entered the village.
The small stone mill still stood, I saw,
the gurgling rush of the stream still turning
its wooden wheel, and that still turning the mill-stones in the dark within.
The forward rushing of the stream,
the low, dull rumble of the turning stones;
no other sound.
But when we left there came to us the gentle rustling
of corn shifting in the evening breeze,
and the stirring of small birds
up in the trees, as though all was well… that
nothing had happened here.
That all the small thatched homes had not been burned
down to the ground, and smoke arising from them still;
that there were no torn men and women and little ones
lying in their blood upon the grass;
that the little church was not a blackened, empty shell;
that the friar in his bloodied frock of black and white
was not swinging, slowly swinging, from the lintel of its door.
And all the while, the unheeding water
gurgled beneath the wheel, and the wheel turned.
There was the quiet rustle of the corn,
and the stirring of the birds up in the branches,
and from within that small stone mill
the rough rumble, the grinding of the stones, turning,
turning on their own, with no man tending them.

From ‘Journeys in Time’

Passages Omitted from the ‘Catalogue of Heroes’ in Culhwch ac Olwen, being the Seventh Tale of the Mabinogion

by Dafydd Hughes Lewis, posted in Of Poetry and Song

And forthwith did Culhwch invoke his boon in the name of three mighty men of the nation of the Cymry:

Shane Yscafndroed, whose mission it was to carry a coated pig’s bladder through the flanks, and yea, even the massed ranks of an opposing host (and so fleet of foot was he, and jinking and weaving withal, that no single one of that host could touch him, but were strewn as laid corn round about the path which was his god-given choice to wend.)

Adam Gwallthir, whose mighty bulk could stand steadfast against the onslaught of eight of the doughtiest men of all the hosts of Lloegr, and of Alban, and of Ireland, and of the Kingdom of the Franks, and of Rome, and even those of the far-flung regions at the south part of the world. (So great of strength was he and fearsome to behold that the spirit of those eight who came in fury against him would wane, and their endurance wither, whereat they would collapse unto naught before him.)

Leigh Hanerceiniog, who would neither bow his back nor strike an attitude of prayer before performing his duty, but would stand upright and stalwart like unto a true son of the Cymry (and even were two tall sticks placed the width of one half-pence piece apart and at a distance of an hundred and three-score paces, he would find his mark.)

From ‘Of Poetry and Song’

The Magician’s Garden

by Dafydd Hughes Lewis, posted in Otherworld

At summer dusk when day is done
and the Evening Star stands lonely and lovely in the sky,
the Magician walks his garden.
Foliage overhangs his path of crystal-diamond grains,
sparkling in the dying light and easing willingly beneath
his sable-slippered feet. All that grows there knows
and offers homage to his tread. The very tallest of the trees
will bow their heads to him as he goes by,
his hands firm-clenched behind his back, his brow taut-gathered,
his mind in deepest thought… and yet he is aware of all,
of all the iridescent wealth and redolence
that fills each breath and atom of the air about.
He walks by saplings with their young and still transparent trunks
shot through with upward-twisting veins of red and gold.
The rustlings of a million metal leaves, sheer-foil each one,
blue tantalum and copper, bronze, and silver-white iridium,
blend softly with the fluting of companion blooms
with tiny, pipe-shaped pistils – their quiet, wistful music fills the air.
The ancient music of the Earth; of secret streams which flow
beneath dark soils, its drifting, languid winds,
white moons of long-gone nights that swam the dark depths
of the skies. And now, when stars are kindling up above
and shadows are deeper and the spaces dim,
his white night-lilies open wide, releasing their host of captive moths
to flutter back and forth among their parent blooms.
And in the twilight gloom above the grass there rides a shimmering crowd,
a fitful cloud, of dragon fire-flies. They prance, they dart about,
and on each rides a shining fairy knight with levelled lance.
But not a martial pair contend – here is no moil and roil of battle –
they are content to muster there, and arc, and dance
and dazzle in the fading light.

I saw him once on such a darkling summer’s eve.
I stood, beside my steed, silent and still, I thought, beneath
the shadow of great elms which marked his garden’s edge.
He turned abruptly from his thoughts and looked direct at me.
‘Do you admire my roses, girl?’ he said.
‘A startling red now, are they not? Because live blood it is that courses
through their veins – and if you do not flee, I will make you a gift of one’.
I fled. I did not wish to pay the price. I did not wish to bleed.

From ‘Otherworld’


The Good Old-fashioned Scrum

by Dafydd Hughes Lewis, posted in Welsh Past and Present

Dai poked Charlie in the eye.
Charles, half-blinded, went for Dai
but missed and biffed his fwend Cawwuthers –
who swung his fists at many others,
landing one on brawny Bryn,
who belted Wodney on the chin.
Wodney, not to be outdone,
kicked Llywelyn up the ‘Ouch!’
Llywelyn roared out loud
and, lunging forward in the crowd,
managed in that mad melee
to bite big Wodwick on the knee.
Wodwick, howling like a loon,
whopped tall Talfryn – none too soon,
for Talfryn, in retaliation,
had bit three others for his nation,
while Evans’ boots had brought the fight
to anything that moved in white.
Who knocked Wil’s teeth out? Fwy, the wat!
(Wil sang ‘false-setto’ after that).
They scragged and throttled any bugger;
it’s what is called ‘enjoying rugger’.
And round and round and up and down
they writhed and tumbled on the ground
like boiling cawl or minestrone,
with language worse than just ‘Baloney!’
In short, that scrum was not polite;
the social graces weren’t in sight.
Who cared the ref – perhaps the ball –
lay somewhere deep beneath it all?
The fault, of course, lay not with red
(at least, that’s what the crowd all said).

From ‘Welsh Past and Present’

The Final Call

by Dafydd Hughes Lewis, posted in Journeys in Time

(Uttered from above a post-Apocalyptic ‘capital’)

It was the last can of Double-Dragon in the Universe,
and I sipped it only slowly so that I could savour
each and every drop – each single, golden, godly drop –
perched high upon the blackened carcass of the Stadium,
where below the rows of seats lay scorched, and the sacred turf
where winged feet had sped in generations gone was now bare earth
upthrusted to the sun, laid out down there as prehistoric fields were laid
in narrow strips, and tended by old men. They toiled laboriously below,
so many ants, watering with love their cabbages and beans.
The sticks lay broken and aslant, like long-forgotten monoliths,
athwart a much-crossed line no longer there.
Two of the four great pylons sagged their necks into the depths,
one day to collapse; a third lay dead across the shattered rows.
High up astride the fourth I looked upon it all, emotionless.
For it was nothing, now, nor had it truly been back in its day –
a glory-ridden, futile gesture in lieu of the missing spirit
of a ransacked people, trampled by their own lassitude and by
usurping locusts from the plain. My last libation – I held it up before me –
gleamed red and green in the fading shafts of sun.
They smiled sardonically, I thought, those beasts, as they beheld,
in all the four directions, the decay and spread of that once-lauded,
over-vaunted hub that was a capital to serve none other than itself,
its unused streets for miles and miles marked out anew by criss-cross,
intersecting lines of overgrowth. The trees were king at last.
Yet it was not all like this. From afar had trickled news that the death-rattle
had not sounded – that in the utmost west and in the central uplands
and the mountains of the north the beacons had been lit;
that the flame was still alive.

Defiantly, I stood. I hurled my two embracing beasts into the pit below.
The vessel sailed and clanged and ricochetted, and as it went it sang out
in a song that surged and fell and surged again like many thousand voices
echoing some lost but imperishable anthem that thrilled the air and caused
the labouring ants below to pause in their tasks and raise their heads,
as though, in syllables faintly known to them, they had heard this song before,
and strove to recover from its failing notes what it once had said to them.
And then – enough. I looked into the dying glow that was the west,
and to the boiling cloud-banks of the north. There I would go.

From ‘Journeys in Time”

The Hill

by Dafydd Hughes Lewis, posted in Uncategorized

The day was dull. The air was dank,
and on my hill the grass was rank
and autumn-brown.
A wind complained among the boughs.
Round about my feet was spread
the thick-massed mould of autumns dead,
and on the boles of ancient trees
lichen ruled in verdigris,
and each stone wore its emerald cap
of moss. Upon the midmost slab
in silvern trail
there clung the gleaming citron snail.

And in the twilight long ago
I lingered on this stone, I know,
and felt her oread arms entwine
my helpless soul, and drank the wine
of ancient eves; felt Lethe flow
within my veins.  And I would know
that dream again – if dream it were –
and I would ministrate to her
as on that eve when first she swayed
against the stars, and met my gaze.
Her limbs were soft, and warm, and lithe,
and pagan fires were in her eyes;
flowers wound her darkling fleece
and corybantic pulses beat
the drums of time. Her moon-round breasts
pursued my chest,
and love diffused its gramarie.

But some Cybelean devilry
took her, and all, away –
and rising in cold light of day,
I stood alone
beside the stone.
And no nephenthe
would assuage the cleaving memory.
That bitter morn I can but grieve.

As, languorous, I strove to leave,
from sullen shadows – bleak, morose,
the faint notes of the syrinx rose.

From ‘Otherworld’

Ethos

by Dafydd Hughes Lewis, posted in Welsh Past and Present

I am the ragged hedgerow glistening with rain,
the rank tussock in the tumbled field,
the rough gold of the rampant gorse:
the random dotted sheep,
the hawk before the wind.
I am the sheer stone of the mountain:
I am the still waters of the lake.
I am the shrouded upland
and the chapeled valley:
I am the lonely farm against the hill.

I am the green pillow under the head of the hero
and the soil that gathers his life’s blood;
the crimson that remains in women’s minds.
A stained and naked blade, I am.
I am the head on the spear,
the neck in the gallows,
the accused on the writ,
the son disinherited,
the singer forbidden to sing;
the bow bent and the lives rent
in the armies of the diaspora.
I am the waste land and the wasted years.
I am she who hurled down the gates
of the west, and he
who unfurled the blood-red banner
in the east:
I am the child beneath the yoke.

I am the toiler on the green slope,
the spinner of molten steel,
the delver in black dust.
The proud slave among dark stacks am I –
aye, and the dancing scarlet on the field.
I am the name inked in the Book
and incised upon the stone.
The image on the wall,
the lock in the pendant,
the laugh and the cry
and the curve of the pen-stroke.
The winding ages made me.

I am the quiescent resolution of your soul,
the still word that gathers,
the just fire that waits.
The axe and the flame of the mind.

From ‘Welsh Past and Present’

Gifts

by Dafydd Hughes Lewis, posted in Memories, Moods, Reflections, Uncategorized

Germinal.
The bud breaks,
the babe
awakes.
The mother sings
her song
of love and innocence.
The child grows.
The world
knows other songs …
experience
shapes
the days of innocence
and love.
Time moulds.
Angels may
sing,
maggots
cling;
hopes may flower
or die.
Days
are gifts,
each one
a kiss of time.
Let each,
let each and every one
sing long and loud  –
of love.
The kiss
is
terminal.

From ‘Memories, Moods, Reflections‘

The Game in Cardiff

by Dafydd Hughes Lewis, posted in Uncategorized

Dai was togged in blazing scarlet,

likewise Wil his long-time butty

with a spot of green to top it

for to see the game in Cardiff.

Both went striding down the valley,

down the long and winding valley

with their tickets in their pockets,

tickets for the game in Cardiff.

Stopped to have some Brain’s for breakfast

– for the Colliers Arms was open –

bright and burnished Brain’s for breakfast

frothy as the spit of cuckoo,

gleaming like a stained glass window,

amber nectar of Valhalla.

Missed the blydi bus by seconds

– quaffed again the heavenly liquid –

got the next one in an hour.

Entered then the hallowed stadium,

sacred centre of the nation,

proud omphalos of the Cymry,

ground revered by all and sundry

where their fathers had lambasted

brawny men from many countries,

Pumas, Wallabies, Springboks, Kiwis

and of course the #?!@%! English –

taught the last some hardy lessons,

tied them up in scarlet ribbons,

packed them back across the border,

handy little dyke of Offa.

Joined the swelling shifting thousands,

shifting, singing sixty thousand

voices drawn from hill and valley,

from Cwmscwt and Bethyngalw,

from the far and distant places,

from all far-off towns and hamlets,

belting out the bread of heaven.

And the fifteen never faltered –

speeding, jinking, swerving wonders,

coursing, sprinting swift magicians

blitzing through the opposition

scoring tries in quick succession,

till the red fifteen, victorious,

brought the game to its conclusion.

Wil and Dai went out ecstatic

carried by the joyous thousands

swirling in that happy river

sweeping through the streets of Cardiff,

drizzly, shining streets of Cardiff.

Then they stopped to have some supper

made of hops and served in tankards,

long and drawn-out frothy supper

held in tankards big and brimming,

brimming with the gold-and-flowing

soft-as-velvet wonder-water,

fabled patriotic potion

strong as steel and clear as crystal;

tossed it down their throats with vigour

as had mighty men of valour

in the days of yore before them

in the storied Mabinogion.

Missed the blydi bus by seconds

– quaffed again the heavenly liquid –

missed the next one in an hour.

So it was that stars were fading,

starry skies of Wales were paling

when our bloated, tired heroes

trekked the road that led them homeward.

Both went stumbling up the valley

(stupid, never-ending valley)

with no money in their pockets

but with plenteous pints inside them;

step by tired step they went, then,

gloating on the game in Cardiff.

Gwen and Bron were waiting for them,

waiting for those two delinquents,

for those boozy, beery rascals

lurching slowly up the valley –

chased the miscreants up the mountain,

tackled one and then the other,

beery belly, legs like jelly

no match for those Welsh girls’ fervour.

Hauled them back and not politely

booted them to bed and scowling,

wagged their fingers, loudly warning

they would cop it in the morning.

But clever Dai and Wil woke early

(clever from the Brain’s inside them),

mooched around for several hours

till the Colliers Arms was open,

stopped to have a frothy breakfast

(followed quickly by another)

and – with consummate dissection –

lived again the game in Cardiff.

From ‘Welsh Past and Present’

Vaunt Courier

by Dafydd Hughes Lewis, posted in Memories, Dreams, Reflections

I thought of the many years that I had wandered in the plain,
of all the days that had passed into the distance –
of the days when I had come to know what lay within
its cities, and its armies, and its people;
how, there, I had once gazed into eyes that were those of an angel,
and yet paid homage to despoiling lips;
how I had drifted in processions of those who offered up
their waxen prayers and barren thanks to heaven,
and sat in the company of those who spat their blasphemies
and laughed as savage men condemned might laugh in Hell;
how I had courted, blind that I was, the pretences that are
liberty and progress.
I recalled those days, too, when I thought I had the strength
to quell that raging world,
but found instead that love and fear and greed and governance
and gods made playthings of us all.
And because of this it was that even in the red hours when men
were cowed, and bowed and ate their bitter bread
I took delight in jesting at that madhouse of a world.
But I looked back, too, and it was with fondest wonder, at the
memorable hues of other seasons past,
when green fields beckoned to a boy in springtime, when his house
rang out with hymns on winter’s evenings,
and with care and joy conjoined, held close the knowledge that the lives
of all his kindred that had gone before,
and each received a share of soil, dwelt yet within him . . .
and that the stars were witness to it all.
It was then that I smiled, and climbed into the untended hills,
on winding tracks, by hawthorn-brakes and crumbled walls.
Far up into the sunlight and heather I stopped, and turned,
and looked upon the sleeping leagues below – on all the natal earth,
and on great clouds which hurried now across a changeful sky.
The light wavered on the heights as I went on, past rock and thorn,
a pale light in which I could not fathom whether I walked by
dawn or dusk.
And at a moment when the sun stood balanced on the crest
I stopped again,
and saw that within a cleft of the rock close by above a man stood,
and he was watching me.
So still he stood; so still. And in each hand – his arms struck
straight out from his sides – he held a staff,
the ends firm-planted in the rock so that it seemed he opened up
a gate into the hill.
He spoke to me. “What have you done?” he said, and, irked
at his challenge,
‘Nothing!’ I replied, and there was sternness in my voice, for I knew
I had not trespassed.
Then I was nigh upon his side, to pass him by with hurried steps, when
gentler it seemed this time, he asked again:
‘What have you done?‘ And as his eyes found mine I trembled,
for what light remained diffracted there as it would along a half-drawn blade,
or upon a gem brought forth too sudden from the darkness of a purse,
and as they looked I saw in them a hidden, latent past that was
my own – but a past that I had not discerned in all my wandering years
upon the plain;
and in that single moment I came to know that the love I thought I had given
to that one, that angel, whom I had loved unto the point of worship
and beyond had, for that very reason, not been love at all.
And as he looked, his question burned there still, until – just gods! –
I must ask myself ‘What have I done?‘ – and straight upon the asking
became aware, with fearful grief,
not of anything that I had ever done throughout my days, but of all,
all that was left undone…
and I bowed my head, and could not trust myself to speak.
I brushed my sleeve across my eyes, and after, with an unwilled,
voiceless cry
placed hands about the staff he offered me. And the words caught
in my throat
as finally I answered, weak and in a whisper now, what I knew to be
the truth:
‘Nothing… ‘ I sobbed. ‘I have done nothing’. And I followed him.

From ‘Memories, Dreams, Reflections’