Where Cars Cannot Come by Cyril Jones

Where cars cannot come

Is where I would go;

Away from the drum

Of their cyclic agenda

So you cannot remember

The vision you know.

.

I walk off the highways

And into the lanes;

To recall the memories

With wind my companion

With sun as my champion

To listen to all, of natures refrains.

.

The rustle of long grass,

The wild whining trees,

A tune, on the edge of glass

Strikes the first chord,

A bloodthirsty sword.

To deep in the wood now, for any reprieve.

.

A flash of the sun

On the edge of the water,

Like the startling fun

Contained in her smile

And roasted by guile

I saw, Neptunes daughter.

.

I cannot go on now,

Where cars cannot come,

But I renew the vow

To do what is needed

And quietly unheeded

I take out the gun.

.

For of all that is troubling me

This now is the sum,

That a sound greater, considerably,

Reside in this lane

And nothing exists, to blot out it’s pain;

Where cars cannot come,

… Is my heart

… Is my brain.

.

.

By Cyril Jones

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Birth by Gillian Clarke

On the hottest, stillest day of the summer

A calf was born in a field

At Pant-y-Cetris; two buzzards

Measured the volume of the sky;

The hills brimmed with incoming

Night. In the long grass we could see

The cow, her sides heaving, a focus

Of restlessness in the complete calm,

Her calling at odds with silence.

 

The light flowed out leaving stars

And clarity. Hot and slippery, the scalding

Baby came, and the cow stood up, her cool

Flanks like white flowers in the dark.

We waited while the calf struggled

To stand, moved as though this

Were the first time. I could feel the soft sucking

Of the new-born, the tugging pleasure

Of bruised reordering, the signal

Of milk’s incoming tide, and satisfaction

Fall like a clean sheet around us.

 

by Gillian Clarke

from The Sundial (Gwasg Gomer, 1978)