St Augustine’s, Penarth by Gillian Clarke

 The church is like the prow
 Of a smoky ship, moving
 On the down channel currents
 To the open sea. A stone
 
 Figurehead, the flowing light
 Streams from it. From everywhere
 You can see Top Church, remote
 As high church is from chapel.
 
 
 Church high on the summit
 Of the climbing town
 Where I was a child, where rain
 Runs always slantingly
 
 On streets like tilted chutes
 Of grey sliding on all sides
 From the church, to sea and dock,
 To shopping streets and home.
 
 Bresting the cloud, its stone
 Profile of an ancient priest
 Preaches continuity
 In the face of turning tides.

by Gillain Clarke
from The Sundial (Gwasg Gomer, 1978) 

Information: St Augustine’s Church is a Grade I listed Gothic Revival nineteenth-century parish church in Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan, Wales. Wales has, historically, had a strong chapel community in the valleys where small community cogregations, with their lay preachers, were far more common than larger organised churches.

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Message by R.S. Thomas

 A message from God
 delivered by a bird
 at my window, offering friendship.
 Listen, such language!
 Who said God was without
 speech? Every word an injection
 to make me smile. Meet me,
 it says, to-morrow here
 at the same time and you will remember
 how wonderful to-day
 was: no pain, no worry;
 irrelevant the mystery, if
 unsolved. I gave you the X-ray
 eye for you to use not
 to prospect, but to discover
 the un-malignancy of love's
 growth. You were a patient, too,
 anaesthetised on truth's table
 with life operating on you
 with a green scalpel. Meet me, I say,
 to-morrow and I will sing it for you
 all over again, when you have come to.
 
 
By R.S. Thomas
 
 
 from Experimenting with an Amen (1986) 

Looking Glass by R.S. Thomas

 There is a game I play
 with a mirror, approaching
 it when I am not there,
 as though to take by surprise.
 
 the self that is my familiar. It
 is in vain. Like one eternally
 in ambush, fast or slow
 as I may raise my head, it raises
 
 its own, catching me in the act,
 disarming me by acquaintance,
 looking full into my face as often
 as I try looking at it askance.
 
 
 by R. S. Thomas
 from Experimenting with an Amen (1986) 

Blog Update: Blwyddyn Newydd Dda! Happy New Year! С новым годом! 2019

For over a year I’ve updated this blog daily and seen a surge in the number of visitors and views for which I’m deeply grateful. However, as I’m sure you’ve already realised before I even finish this sentence, such a frequent rate of uploading can’t be maintained.

I’m not stopping the blog but just altering to a more manageable frequency of posting. There will definitely be one poetry entry per week with the possibility of additional posts if there’s an opportunity. On the bright side this gives me time to post longer poems as you’ll have noticed that, more often than not, there’s a limit to the length of those featured so far.

It’ll also give me a chance to post the reviews and other such articles that I keep drafting but putting to rot in a folder. There are a number of events dating back years now that should have been posted at the time but I can now look at them with hindsight and better assess their impact.

So yes, in brief, there will less frequent uploads but there’ll be more variety. It’ll only be reduced down from daily to weekly posts which is surely still reasonable as I am just one person and you’ve multi-person teams who barely upload something once a week (if that).

Most likely it’ll be more reviews and such coming alongside a weekly poem. I’ll try to remember to alternate between Welsh and Russian poems but I might throw in some others from different sources too.

There are over 800 posts on the blog so you’re welcome to delve into the archives in the meantime and comment on anything if you’ve any views or questions you would like to express.

So what’s with the title image?

Have you heard of the following Welsh traditions?

The Mari Lwyd is a wassailing folk custom in South Wales conducted around this time of year. The tradition entails the use of an eponymous hobby horse which is made from a horse’s skull mounted on a pole and carried by an individual hidden under a sackcloth. It represents a regional variation of a “hooded animal” tradition that appears in various forms throughout Great Britain.

Also recently there was Plygain: a traditional Welsh Christmas service which takes place in a church between three and six o’clock in the morning, traditionally on Christmas morning.

On a sidenote I’ve gotten into Folk Horror recently and attended Snowcat Cinema’s evening of BBC Ghost Stories at Penarth Pier a few weeks ago so look forward to a few posts about that topic too.

I hope you have a nice New Year’s Day and if you’ve any suggestions for the blog such as Russian films to review, Folk Horror stories to read, films/TV episodes to watch or anything about Wales you’d like to hear about then please comment below as everyone is welcome.

Pause by R.S. Thomas

 'Rest a while,'
 says the muse,
 but I press on
 losing myself between
 the dictionary and the blank
 page. Wisdom advises,
 'Call ber bluff and
 she'll come cringing.'
 But I am all nerves,
 running vocabulary
 through my fingers, faster
 and faster. And somewhere
 before me is
 the great poem, wrapped
 in its stillness, that
 I fool myself into
 thinking I will overtake soon
 by putting on speed.
 
 
 by R. S. Thomas
 from Unpublished Poems 

The Casualty by R.S. Thomas

 I had forgotten
 the old quest for truth
 I was here for Other cares
 
 held me: urgencies
 of the body; a girl
 beckoned; money
 
 had never appeared
 so ethereal; it was God's blood
 circulating in the veins
 
 of creation; I partook
 of it like Communion, lost
 myself on my way
 
 home, with the varying voices
 on call. Moving backward
 into a receding
 
 future, I lost the use
 of perspective, borrowing poetry
 to buy my children
 
 their purpose. The past was a poor
 king, rendering his crown down
 for the historian. Every day
 
 I went on with that
 metallic warfare in which
 the one casualty is love.
 
 
  by R. S. Thomas
 from Laboratories of the Spirit (1975) 

Tenancies by R.S. Thomas

 This is pain's landscape.
 A savage agriculture is practised
 Here; every farm has its
 Grandfather or grandmother, gnarled hands
 On the cheque-book, a long, slow
 Pull on the placenta about the neck.
 Old lips monopolise the talk
 When a friend calls. The children listen
 From the kitchen; the children march
 With angry patience against the dawn.
 They are waiting for someone to die
 Whose name is as bitter as the soil
 They handle. In clear pools
 In the furrows they watch themselves grow old
 To the terrible accompaniment of the song
 Of the blackbird, that promises them love.
 
 
By R.S. Thomas
 from Not That He Brought Flowers (1968)