Poetry

Abergwesyn Pass

That spring they chose the
thin road rising from Tregaron’s sodden peat
preserving the foolish and lost
and the bones of a bewildered elephant
resting his lumbering stunts behind the Talbot Hotel.

Sheared by cutting wind
they laboured the drovers way
blind with rain to Mynydd Elenydd
where a solitary red phone box communicates with God across the high emptiness
and the hardened farmers of Soar gathered to hear his words
painted on the chapel’s whitewashed walls:
Duw Cariad Yw.*

Turning away, down,
to the drowned inlets of Llyn Brianne;
migrant pines line the shore,
and the cries of red kites proclaim their multiple sovereignty
over fallen walls robed in moss.

The border is silent,
shod geese and cattle long since passed, ducks scuffing the dusty trail to Beulah,
a month to the markets of London
and a week’s return.

On Eppynt’s edge
they watch as a skittish dog barks along the ridge
ready to round them up.

* God Is Love

Ceris Morris