Welsh Journals

POEM The blue climate of Spain will not last for ever; Shoes pointed in the dance, advancing lovers Drop from their toes, and all their roses Wither. Beauty breaks half my heart, no human creature Pressed on my lips a bloody signature Like this, or broke the rainbow's promises. These thoughts be with me when the sad procession Of planets, red and falling incessantly Moves to the earth, writes death on the horizon, And nothing, not even your love, in that sad season Is worth the darkness flickering from the sea. Regard the sky, the city; how confusion Grows in a scarlet wind. Now falls the peak That fells tomorrow's ark-oh, pitiless vision, This end I serve, this spectacle I seek. CHARLES FISHER. RHONDDA POEM (No. 5) HILLS reinforced with rock, wall up my eyes, and tips, now pyramids that mock a sterile age, plug tight my nose, and bas-relieve a negative of waste. My hands were moulded round a mandrel wood, my bones set in a vice of coal, the air I breathed must mix with smut or froze my blood to dust crushed by a stone. But now this is the Cwm of Living Dead, drugged red at seventeen bob a dose. Two days a week we Hic jacet on slips for dole paid by a glue-thumbed clerk. MEURIG WALTERS.