Memories

The Rover’s Return

The Rover’s Return

The eternal return to The Rover’s Return,
renovated, again and again, but filled
with the ghosts of Ena Sharples and others
who walked this cobbled street before,
and every episode more or less the same,
though décor, characters, accents change
and life becomes ever more complicated
from episode to episode, the street slang
changing slightly, and ageing characters
ageing more and more as time goes by,
and yet the trumpet’s martial sound,
the rhythms of the northern brass bands,
the first of those accents to break the plum
in the mouth snobbery of Oxford English
and the BBC’s domination of the language,
and ‘hey, Mr. Oxford Don, me no graduate,
me immigrate,’ echoing round the abandoned
buildings where the working class once worked,
and the elderly were cared for by their friends
and neighbors, not tossed into care homes,
and abandoned to their fate, as they have been
so often of late, and all things change, in time
with the clocks that tick-tock forward, their clock
work everlasting, and the pigeons still there,
and those crazy chimney pots, and that cat,
slithering down the roof, and the rovers still roving,
then returning, once again to the Rover’s Return.

Click here for Roger’s reading.

Comment: For more than sixty years I have listened to Coronation Street and some things have never changed, the trumpeter from the Brass Band, the rain on the cobbles, the memories and ghosts that linger among brickwork and paint. It takes me back to my childhood, when ITV was the upstart channel that dared to challenge the might of the mighty, one might almost say, the almighty BBC. And now, here in Island View, I turn away from the color and recall the old black and white sets, with their selection of two channels, one of them advert free, and their scheduled times of programs, not the TV blaring twenty four hours a day and two hundred channels available at the touch of a button.

It’s all one sentence, though I had to stop and take a couple of breaths while reading it. My good friend and fellow poet, Jane Tims, has called me ‘the master of the long sentence,” and I do love long sentences, especially when I am in rant mode, like now. But I am also very much aware of other friends that warn me that “your sentences are too long. They are too complicated. I don’t understand them. Write shorter sentences.” OMG, FFS. LMA* – 4 – UAW** – IMHO.

Translation of unusual terms: LMA* = Leave Me Alone. UAW** = You aRe Wrong.

Acknowledgements: My quote from the poem, inaccurate, and from memory, is from John Agard, whose poetry I love. I acknowledge now his poem and its influence upon me. I too am no Oxford don, and I too am an immigrant. His wonderful reading of the full poem can be found here. John Agard, Oxford Don.

Ides of March

Ides of March

Sometimes, as the sun goes down, the shadows close in.
You can sense real people, half-hidden in the mists
rising up from the ground. You shiver in their presence.

They fought a battle here, according to legend.
Legends never lie, though they hide away the facts,
as these mists hide those fallen warriors, brought
back to life, in the half-light, and thirsting for warm blood.

In the distance, blood flows staining the evening sky.
When the hairs on your neck rise up as wraiths, you take
to your heels and run to the place where you left your car.

Westbury White Horse, Badbury Rings, Maiden Castle –
such places are haunted with those whose spirits never left,
never moved on. They stayed here, defending the defenseless,
spirited warriors, never saying die, not even when dead.

Close by, at the hill’s foot, someone has built an altar
crowned by a small, carved cross. Who put those flowers on it?
Who came to bless the peace of those who dream and wait?

The Ides of March have come once more. Now they have gone.
Like all those other Ides before them, like all those years,
those seasons, those warriors. Come and gone. Or not gone,
as you stand there, sensing their spirits, living on and on.

Click here for Roger’s reading.

Comment: The Ides of March – March 15 this year, two days before St. Patrick’s Day. “The Ides of March are come.” “Ay, Caesar. Come but not gone.” William Shakespeare. Julius Caesar. The Ides always seem such a precious time. Sandwiched between St. David (Wales) on March 1 and St. Patrick (Ireland) on March 17, and all so close to the Equinox and the start of spring. It is snowing outside my window as I type. About four inches / ten centimeters down and more to come. But, with the lengthening of the daylight hours and the arrival of spring, we hope the snow won’t last too long.

Erratic

Erratic
Four Elements pp. 156-159

Plucked before my time
by some glacial hand,
that tore me from my land
and deposited me on
this foreign shore.

Long did I languish,
worn slowly down
by wind, rain, ice, snow.
Now I am carved anew
and learning to grow.

The old land rejected me,
wouldn’t let me back.
This land had no choice,
but I found I had lost all
notion of a distinctive voice.

Now I belong nowhere, a stranded
immigrant, I cannot return.
Neither can I call this place home,
and yet I have sent my roots
deep into its landscape.

I have grown into it,
become one with its seasons,
accepting its long hours
of silence, with white snow
falling upon darkening trees.

World Within

World Within
Anam Cara, p. 15

I have rediscovered a world within me,
a secret world where I walked as a child,
a world that nobody else has ever seen.

When I was young, that world absorbed me.
In it, I went round and round on roundabouts,
and travelled high and low on swings and
swing boats, with their rough ropes.

Alas, as always, there were rainy days.
Then the sun would wear his hat but I knew
he would come out later and join my play.

Sometimes, in the summer, thunderstorms
would roll around and rattle our corrugated roof.
Dai Jones’ cows would rush through the field,
seeking shelter from the wind and rain.

In those days, every cloud had a silver lining.
I weathered tough times, waiting patiently
for the sun to return and light up the world.

One day, I don’t remember when, someone,
I don’t know who, slammed the door and shut
me out from that world. I spent my whole life
searching for it. At last, I have found it again.

Click here for Roger’s reading.

White Wolf

White Wolf

The white wolf of winter
exits her den-warmth and
shakes snow from her coat. Flakes
fly, whitening the world.

She points her nose skywards,
clears her throat, howls until
cold winds blow their chorus
of crystals, crunchy crisp.

We cower behind wooden walls,
peer out through frosted glass.
The white wolf draws near and she huffs
and she puffs until door frames rattle.

The snow drifts climb higher,
blotting out the light. Night
falls, an all-embracing
Arctic night of endless
snow snakes slithering on
ice-bound, frost-glass highways,
side roads and city streets.

Outside, in the street lights’
flicker, snow flies gather.
Thicker than summer moths,
they drop to the ground, form
ever-deepening drifts.

Our dreams become nightmares:
endless, sleepless nights, filled
with the white wolf’s winter
call for snow and even more snow.

Click here to hear Roger’s reading.

Heart and Hearth

Heart and Hearth

I remember the old coal fires in Swansea.
My grandmother’s house in the Hafod,
with a hearth separate from the kitchen.
The hearth held a huge cast iron fire-place
where cookpots and kettles hung
 or nestled into smouldering coals.

My grandfather’s house in Brynmill,
had a magic fireplace. Banked in before bed,
it gave warmth and light all through the night.
Warmth, comfort, the family gathered,
the wisdom of the old shared with the young,
traditional tales and songs passed down.

Everybody was welcome and each one
had a special spot reserved around the fire.

Comment:

I have been revising this poem, shortening it, and changing it very gently. Funny how the old days come back and dance before us, like the flames dance on the coals, as the old ghosts walk now upon the logs.

Click here for Roger’s reading.

Questions

Questions
Four Elements, p. 137

After my mother died,
I lit a candle in every church,
a real bees’ wax candle,
not those tiny electric lights
that glow for a little while,
when you insert money
in the insatiable slot.

Like the minuterie
on each landing of a Parisian
staircase, it gives enough light for
a quick prayer, or a very short
moment or two of silence.

Where does the light go
when the electricity switches off?
Where does the flame go
when the candle is snuffed?
Where did my mother go
when her light went out?

One day, but not too soon, I hope,
I will have to follow her and find
the answers to all of my questions.

Click here for Roger’s reading.

Hearth and Soul

Hearth and Soul

The kitchen – hearth and soul of the house. Here we gather, sit around the table and talk our hearts out. But here, in Island View, we have a kitchen, a gathering, but no hearth, and hence no real heart around which the household revolves.

In spite of that, old habits die hard. I remember the old coal fires in Swansea. My grandmother’s house in the Hafod, with a kitchen in a separate room from the stove, with a huge cast iron fire-place where cookpots and kettles could be hung or nestled into the coals. My grandfather’s house in Brynmill, where kitchen and hearth were separated, but the fire-place still held its magic. Banked in at night, those fires gave warmth and light ar hyd a nos and then they we resurrected the next morning.

We have a woodstove here in Island View, but we rarely light it as the fine particles make breathing difficult after a while. We keep it for emergencies. This winter we lit it when the temperatures dropped to -40C, with the wind chill factor, and heat pump and electric furnace needed assistance.

Warmth, comfort, the family gathered, the wisdom of the old folks shared with the young, and the passing on of traditional melodies. All the old memories and thoughts, the wishes and desires, the hiraeth too, handed down, from old to young. Everybody was welcome and everyone had his or her special place.

Such memories tug at the heart strings – hearth strings. Anyone who shares them with me will know what I mean.

Swansea

Swansea

To be Welsh in Swansea is to know each stop on the Mumbles Railway: the Slip, Singleton, Blackpill, the Mayals, West Cross, Oystermouth, the Mumbles Pier. It’s to remember that the single lines turn double by Green’s ice-cream stall, down by the Recreation Ground, where the trams fall silent, like dinosaurs, and wait, without grunting, for one to pass the other. It’s to read the family names on the War Memorial on the Prom. It’s to visit Frank Brangwyn in the Patti Pavilion and the Brangwyn Hall. It’s to talk to the old men playing bowls in Victoria Park. It’s to know that starfish stretch like a mysterious constellation, at low tide, when the fishnets  glow with gold and silver, and the banana boats bob in the bay, waiting to enter harbour, and the young boys dive from the concrete pipes without worrying about pollution.  But when the tide turns, the Mumbles Railway has been sold to a Texan, the brown and yellow busses no longer run to Pyle Corner, Bishopston, Pennard, Rhossili, sweet names of sand and tide, where my father’s ghost still fishes for salmon bass, casting its lines at the waves as they walk wet footprints up the beach to break down the sand-castle walls I built to last forever at Brandy Cove and by the Slip on Swansea sands.

Click here to listen to Roger’s reading on Anchor.

On Being Welsh – Dydd Dewi Sant

On Being Welsh – Dydd Dewi Sant

On being Welsh
in a land ruled by the English

 I am the all-seeing eyes at the tip of Worm’s Head.
I am the teeth of the rocks at Rhossili.

I am the blackness in Pwll Ddu pool
when the sea-swells suck the stranger
in and out, sanding his bones.

Song pulled taut from a dark Welsh lung,
I am the memories of Silure and beast
mingled in a Gower Cave.

Tamer of aurox, hunter of deer, caretaker of coracle,
fisher of salmon on the Abertawe tide,
I am the weaver of rhinoceros wool.

I am the minority, persecuted for my faith,
for my language, for my sex,
for the coal-dark of my thoughts.

I am the bard whose harp, strung like a bow,
will sing your death with music of arrows
from the wet Welsh woods.

I am the barb that sticks in your throat
from the dark worded ambush of my song.

On Being Welsh – short stories – Amazon and Cyberwit

On Being Welsh – poems included in my selected poems (1979-2009)

Cherry always listened to my readings

Click here to here Roger’s reading on Anchor
– On Being Welsh