A Heron Flies Overhead by Mike Jenkins

In the scatterings of the year
the clothes will not take flight,
twigs and leaves do not stir
and the moor fades out of sight.
 
A tree-creeper scurries against gravity,
two jays are flowers of the air,
the geese snake water thirstily,
magpies are always asking 'Where?'
 
A heron flies overhead with calm
and rhythmic pulsing of the wings,
towards the west it charms
my senses with its rare passing.
 
It seems now like a prophecy:
what will happen when streams have gone?
Diggers will treat the mountain ruthlessly,
fumes and dust consume the songs.
 
 
by Mike Jenkins
from Red Landscapes 

Additional information: Mike Jenkins (born 1953) is a Welsh poet, story writer and novelist writing in English. He taught English at Radyr Comprehensive School in Cardiff for nearly a decade and Penydre High School, Gurnos, Merthyr Tydfil, for some two decades before that. At the end of the 2008–2009 academic year Jenkins took voluntary redundancy. He now writes full-time, capitalising on experiences gleaned from former pupils. He continues to live in Merthyr Tydfil, and has done so for over 30 years. He is also the father of Plaid Cymru politician Bethan Jenkins and journalist Ciaran Jenkins.

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The Moor by R. S. Thomas

It was like a church to me.

I entered it on soft foot,

Breath held like a cap in the hand.

It was quiet.

What God was there made himself felt,

Not listened to, in clean colours

That brought a moistening of the eye,

In movement of the wind over grass.

 

There were no prayers said. But stillness

Of the heart’s passions – that was praise

Enough; and the mind’s cession

Of its kingdom. I walked on,

Simple and poor, while the air crumbled

And broke on me generously as bread.

 

by R. S Thomas

from Pietà (1966)

Moorland by R. S. Thomas

It is beautiful and still;

the air rarified

as the interior of a cathedral

 

expecting a presence. It is where, also,

the harrier occurs,

materialising from nothing, snow –

 

soft, but with claws of fire,

quartering the bare earth

for the prey that escapes it;

 

hovering over the incipent

scream, here a moment, then

not here, like my belief in God.

 

by R. S. Thomas

from Experimenting with an Amen (1986)

Fragment (Before Death I Have Felt The Dark Of Death) by Wilhelm Küchelbecker

Before death I have felt the dark of death;

I thought: like Ossian I shall lose my way

in mist by the grave’s edge and blindly stare

from wild moors down through the dim precipice

of dawnless night and see no trees, no fields

of freedom, no soft grass, no azure skies,

and no sun rising like a miracle.

Yet with the soul’s eye I shall see you, shades

of prophets, friends too soon flown out of sight,

and I shall hear the blessed poet’s song

and know each voice and recognize each face.

 

by Вильгельм Карлович Кюхельбекер (Wilhelm Karlovich Küchelbecker)

(1845)

translated by Peter France

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Fun fact: This was written after he went blind about a year before his death.