Welsh Journals

more recondite, obscure psychological reasons) is a chronic inability to be only seldom conscious of the Parish or Shire or Country in which I live. When after a climb I reach one of our Rhondda hill-tops, my mind at once becomes less occupied with the beauty or otherwise of my immediate surroundings, or their historical associations, if any than by the over-riding consciousness, or awareness, of the fact that I'm but a transient piece of humanity A woman alone in afield, shawl as white as shadow is black, listens along the wind, but her lover will never come back. Up the steep sky to the sun birds scale the cliff of air; but closed are her eyes, her feet falter, going nowhere. The woman lifts her head, listening past the hills. Day, like a held glass, with silence fills. A woman alone in afield, shawl as white as skin is fair, lies down with her face to the grass, but there's nothing of comfort there. WOODCUT 0 why must I a woman alone bear the cruelty, bear the shame, while the green-blooded tree and the stone mock, mouthing his name. The old world turns around; days and nights like beads on a thread. Loneliness looks in my window, emptiness lies in my bed. Roy Brewer