A man with no roots is lost
like the darkness in the forest.
Heart, my heart, what red voices cry
centuries of suffering in my flowing hands?
Love lasts as long as there are
two people, however silent the word.
Love, my love, how may I meet your eyes,
how may I meet the eyes that I will close?
Future, my future, on whose arms
will my hands be planted?
Love, my love, be assured your eyes
will live after you like children.
by Dannie Abse
from Early Poems
I have banished God
further than the Antipodes
since my so-called accident.
He was the owner
of those mills of death,
his manager the old Cholera.
The preaching of Cheapjack remedies:
holding up heaven as a cure.
They took my eyes
and struck them
into cannon-balls.
My mask and its perpetual night
is known to the pit-ponies.
Crossing the Iron Bridge
I hear the river’s voice
bring tune to my ballads,
the hooves of canal-horses
count beats and pauses come
as I breathe the welcome wind
from the west and eventual sea.
Night arrives and they all
share my mask: punchy drunkards,
rousing rebels and laughing ones
who sup to conquer daytime.
My daughter is the blackbird
giving flames to the begging hearth
of our basement with her song;
and I am the owl, I turn
to face their sufferings,
call them out to chase away
the chimney’s shadows. Masters
I magic to mice
under the death’s-head moon.
by Mike Jenkins
from Invisible Times
Fun fact: Richard Williams, better known as Dic Dywyll (Blind Dick) but also sometimes as Bardd Gwagedd (The Bard of Folly) was a renowned ballader in nineteenth century Merthyr, who was blinded working at the Crawshay ironworks. His daughter, Myfanwy, was immortalised in Joseph Parry‘s song.
This link gives you a little bit more information about Dic Dywyll if you’re interested: http://yba.llgc.org.uk/en/s-WILL-RID-1790.html
Lying in me, as though it were a white
Stone in the depths of a well, is one
Memory that I cannot, will not, fight:
It is happiness and it is pain.
Anyone looking straight into my eyes
Could not help seeing it, and could not fail
To become thoughtful, more sad and quiet
Than if he were listening to some tragic tale.
I know the gods changed people into things,
Leaving their consciousness alive and free.
To keep alive the wonder of suffering,
You have been metamorphed into me.
– by Анна Ахматова (Anna Akhmatova) (Summer 1916, Slepnyovo)
– from Белая стая (White Flock, 1917) translation by D. M. Thomas
Rambling At The Bridge Head 