Welsh Journals

The Poet of Curig by W GLADSTONE THE young Rhys had always wondered if there wasn't the gleaning of a poet in himself. For after Glenys had died the words always seemed to be whispering in his brain, intensifying the things his eyes saw and the thoughts his mind held without him ever asking them to. But just how much of a poet there was in him he didn't realise until. but that would be telling the end before the beginning. He had been eighteen when he'd lost Glenys. And it was the first time in his life that he felt the overwhelming need of something into which to pour all his tumbling, chaotic emotions. Glenys had been a bewitching girl of laughter and beauty. It seemed to him that all the world had gone with her, and he'd tramped the green lanes, the warm, sunny mountainsides and the golden-glinted fields, in unbearable agony of mind. And the words had come without his willing them Beauty lies still in the dark days Fruitless the light in the sun's stark rays No bud will open for the rose has gone How torn my heart against the thorn. And thus had opened a floodgate through which chaotic words had rushed. He tramped until his shoes were worn past repair. And gradu- ally the emotions that the words expressed had become brighter and less full of despair, and he had realised that the existence of the words in his mind had helped to ease the pain. And the habit of words had stayed with him. Sometimes the stars were the moon's crystalled tears and sometimes they were her festive diamonds. He'd always heard the song of the winds, but now there were words to it, there were words to so many things. As the time passed by his heart lightened as he had thought it never would again. And then he saw Rhiannon a sylph of grace a sword of light. He had discovered that there was still happiness for him in the world. They lived in the cottage in Curig which was near the fold of the hills where the sheep he looked after had their grazing. It was when the whiteness of his hair was beginning to match the