Welsh Journals

As the melancholy scene of boys and unwedded maidens stretching out their arms to churlish Charon passed through my mind, the children lost interest in Benjamin Brith and turned to view the leaves which still rustled and crackled as they were blown pell-mell along the tar macadam road. With shouts of delight, Rh. exclaimed: 'Look at the leaves. They are like lots of little mice hurrying home from school and all talking together.' My reverie of the pale subjects of Persephone was shattered, only to be replaced by an even more bizarre picture of small rodents, complete with schoolboy caps and satchels, bursting from their pedagogic barriers. 'Oh, there is one left behind. He will miss the bus, and his mother will be worrying', and M. stopped to rescue a tiny beech leaf which had come to rest in a sheltered nook, and threw it back into the mad helter skelter. The approaching school bus put an end to any further fancies, and as I walked back to the house, I wondered whether it was congenital melancholy in Milton and Vergil which in their minds linked autumn leaves with fallen angels and departed spirits, or was it lack of poetic imagination in my small daughters which made them see them as little mice. Doubtless, an educational psychologist would say it merely indicated a potential interest in Zoology. It pleased me who was self faithful, Polished with warm, sea crystal confidence, To play at deck quoits on your white hull. Imagine my surprise, shattered sense, To find under plimsolls no foot fall But water, hand feeling no ring at all But open, stretched up, tense From the sea. Then aching and null I can assure you, sink, crystal prescence Turned to find its own heart cool. DECK QUOITS Nicholas Evans