Welsh Journals

WINTER AFTERNOON The studious rain with its slow idiom Speaks of peace in these valleys; and the wind Of Mynyddislwyn, as always Is singing in roadways and in phrases of music. The factories rumble and churn and The sea and its mysterious relationships- An essence compounded Of mysterious powers-spits its saliva of seaweed. On the rockbound coast, its spray a chorus Of birds. In dark chasms awaking, in the woods Of Talley, words from The past are remembered, twitching with Bewildered colours from Ellis Wynne and the Passions of the Mabinogion. And Nest and Peredur Too have a thousand Voices. The throats of the gulls flying inshore Have the modulations of music. For now, beside The Toff, the voices re-echo; and the glorious roar Is for the threequarter Line in movement, the wing about to score. Everywhere the cry reappears, in towns picked out With lights, and the dusk descending; gathered in the evening papers; Vying in voice with the hymns for tomorrow. But somewhere now, half-drunk in Wales, The wind is singing from the Vale of Glamorgan to the banks of the Towy, And the day's events remembered are praised in outline. Walford Morgan