On Nant Ffrancon
along the quarryman's track,
stones underfoot clack,
squeak and clatter their racy stories;
rocky raconteurs of the lumpy way
syllable companionable silences.
Beyond this boggy khaki,
soaking up a lone crow's 'Khaak!' skimming slow
over hanging valleys shocked to sullen stolidity
by the glacial scumble of a frigid jet,
far from this making sway,
deep in another week
of unintelligible corridors,
articulate worlds, pebbled in meditative phrases,
listlessly gravelled for oozy sentences
will serve to cement a common perjury.
A freeze-thaw cracks the face of incoherence:
jagged tears tumble a scree.
..............................
OK. It's written on a school trip at the Menai Centre in Wales next that interminably named village in Anglesey. Nant Ffrancon itself is on the mainland, in Snowdonia. I was co-opted from the English dept. to join the Geographers since the head of Humanities thought well of me.
It's then comparing how things are on the trip with how they are back in school. Ok I am a softy - but had also to be hard in classroom as a new teacher in a rough school.
YOU ARE READING
Tapestries
PoetryPoems from 1978 onwards. These poems are in a different style from the later MajorSeventh, the earlier ones often with more of an Eastern-influenced cadence. Later, they vary a lot in form and style.
