I've only attempted writing fiction in the last year or so, but for a few years before that I wrote a fair amount of poetry (tho not hugely prolific). Perhaps strangely, I have never written a poem on a tg subject, never been inspired to really. Most have come from my upbringing, grief for a community that was destroyed, coming to terms with the death of friends (many of whom are gay and/or alcoholics so a fair few have shuffled off). It doesn't help the reader that they're stuffed with references that only really work if you're from South West Wales... this is probably my most accessible piece (tho there's a Welsh word in there, and it's quite downbeat).
The Drovers' Road
Don't burn my body when it's empty
find it a corner, somewhere quiet close to home,
with root shot, lichen scoured walls
overgrown and broken to the sky.
Remember then the drovers' road,
the bwthin where we stopped to smoke
and spoke of nothing consequential
sharing our smaller, sober dreams.
Laughing at our ambition's limits
we crouched in the black damp,
hands cupped, striking matches
tricked by the wind at every turn.
Comments
soon to be a city lights chapbook
I'd love to see more of your poems, Ceri.
Even with asterisks and little glossary footnotes down below for the Welsh words.
I love all the poems here, even the kinda amateur ones that rhyme SEE with BE with FREE,
because they're so personal and heartfelt, and often seem to represent a t.g. person's
first attempts at coming to terms with her life, feelings, fears & hopes on paper...
But DROVER'S ROAD is the sort of thing I find in the literary small press, magazines which pay in copies and
my poet friends send me. And if the editors are sharp + observant it might even make it to the major leagues- hardbound anthologies and filler for the Atlantic Monthly. It's sophisticated free verse (I can't do it myself
but have read enough to know it when I see it); subtle, using incidental seeming things as metaphor.
Seems somehow Audenesque, the tone of it. Me like it good!
~~~hugs, Laika
What borders on pure insanity?
Canada and Mexico.
.
Nicely elegaic.
I think you have the touch Ceri. Soft, grey, misty sadness on a hill side.
Maybe because I too live on one, with lots of wind and dry stone walls giving inadequate shelter. Probably a good breeding ground for melancholy.
I know it is quite different but it has the same effect on me as Rosetti's "Be the green grass above me with showers and dewdrops wet, and if thou wilt, remember, and if thou wilt, forget", and Yeats' thing about the "wet wild strawberry leaves".
Strangely enough I heard something on the radio the other day about the value of sadness in the pursuit of happiness. I was only half listening, only heard half of it, and have forgotten most of what I did hear, but I do recall the general gist was that the whole hearted pursuit of happiness was self defeating because one needed some sadness to achieve happiness. It was following a survey to find who where the happiest and surprisingly the wealthiest nations who had achieved much material prosperity and who had time and means to devote themselves to the pursuit of happiness, and did so as a high priority, ranked rather low. This was particularly true of the U.S. apparently. God knows how they measure it and I suspect that it is almost inevitably flawed, but I can see why it might be so.
Floreat Melancholia
Fleurie
Is a bwithin ...
... what is called in Scotland a bothy?
I'm not great for poetry, especially none rhyming, but this one is evocative of places in Derbyshire I love and have wandered for many years awheel and afoot. Our tracks are not usually drove roads but salt routes and ways to old lead mining sites some originally Roman but often pre-dating them. I sometimes travel them in my head with the aid of OS maps and sometimes discover ones new to me. Quite honestly I'm indifferent to the destination of my body when I die; I'll be past bothering then.
Thanks
Geoff
I may have been a bit disingenuous
The poem has appeared in print (in a Welsh journal), along with a few others... my friends grew tired of me showing them around and nagged me to submit them somewhere. It's quite different to most of my others, which are more Welsh, blacker and in some cases intentionally funny. I don't write many poems, and I'm an obsessive rewriter - this took almost three years to finish. I've not written much in the last year, I spent a long time trying to write more structured metrical verse and wound up in a bit of a dead end.
I'm not sure if there's a direct link with the Scots word, but 'bwthin' is literally a cottage, tho it's used here as a place of refuge, or shelter, a bit like 'cwtch'.
other other stuff
Rooted out a few more that may just not be wholly obscure :)
The Evangelist
My whistle filled the vacant moment
with a draught from my chapel childhood
'When I survey the wondrous cross'
idle in the low notes, rather flat,
as I'd first heard it on a vestry organ
wheezing like Datcu in his dust.
'My word what a wonderful tune that is'
his grape round vowels slurred and spilled
but behind the brandy broken cheeks
his eyes shone, with a lay preacher's zeal.
Framed by his most Christian smile he asked
'Tell me brother are you saved?'
my answer 'no I'm only Welsh'.
'Datcu' is a Welsh form of 'grandfather' & 'dust' was a word describing pulmonary illnesses that afflicted Miners.
Peacefully, in their cups
Dai Twice and Griffy both
like all good drinkers dropped stone dead.
What wit they had, and wisdom,
left on that last beery breath.
Aye, that's the way to go, still singing,
still only Sunday morning sober.
'Twice' is a common nickname in South Wales where parents often name sons with a forename that repeats their surname, e.g David Davies = Dai Twice