Welsh Journals

The Gate GOD spit in my eye and strike me down, I am hamshouldered in this peopled world, I who am dead and not one of these, Take me into your sanctum of peace. Run me away from the slick defeat, Run me away from the pendant skirt, God take me out of this super-embarrassment, That claws at my bleeding throat. Take me away from the things that I kick, The things that bleed my heels, Plead for leniency with Apostle Peter, But talk to me not of his keys. Coward I am, coward I am, God fight me and hate me, Coward I am, loving my name in neon, God take that neon away. COLIN JENKINS. When the Long Hours WHEN the long hours Grow thin and doubly mortgaged at the wrists and twist to flint When barren fortitudes Bear no late lanterns to the postern-gate, Then trump of cock-crow wakes no citadel, But calls to sucking yew and the dark worm. Along the fields are misted histories In dead brocade and tattered tapestries, All marrow gone, and motionless in time As lowered coffins. Here are the terminal confines, intertwined, Of two terrains the one explored, exploded The other magical and urgent, waiting For the long plunge, the sheer stone falling Into white depths, the deep and loud horizons. A. G. PRYS-JONES