Menna Elfyn will be reading at events across Wales this autumn: next at Palas Print, Caernarfon on 4 December. The joint Bloodaxe online launch for Parch is on YouTube.
Gauze in Gaza (Gaza was once a centre for weaving this thin translucent fabric)
After a graze, balm
to kiss the wound better.
Then a square of gauze –
its light, silky weave
caressing skin,
a white secret
hidden under plaster.
*
As a child,
we’d brandish this shield –
‘been in the wars’ again
the elders sighed.
Blood, our quiet witness
after a sudden fall.
*
Tonight, how light-hearted
the talk of slips as we once
hit the dirt headlong –
while we watch on screen
folk and tribes unbandaged,
a land without tourniquet.
And still no gauze in sight in Gaza –
only the thin woven fabric
of a nation eternally
‘in the wars’.
[Written in English]
—————
Storm in Brooklyn Subway
Thistle of rain.
We seek temple from tempest,
litany in lightning,
a mottled crowd huddled,
backs to the wall,
gasping for refuge.
Then, in an instant, the heavens smile,
the firm ground forms
and the petrific hour
once frail, now becomes flesh.
Grace greases every foothold –
people hum all the way home.
[written in English]
—————
Peacemakers – (translated from the Welsh of Waldo Williams, 1904-71
– registered pacifist, prophetic poet)
The sky rose-amber over snow
warns bombed Swansea is ablaze,
I walk home within its glow
and parents’ love where I was raised.
They are blessed beyond this place,
peacemakers, children of Grace.
No mud was slung, no savage boot
would cross the threshold where we slept,
Mam would gild all sin or brute
with kinder words and kindness kept.
They were blessed beyond this ground,
peacemakers of God’s renown.
Angels of each poor abode
offered riches to my dad,
friendship’s message to uphold
found God’s gifts in all they had.
They are blessed beyond this land,
peacemakers with open hands.
Nations, be they good or ill,
would claim it’s neither here nor there,
in Christ’s light is freedom’s will
for any soul to choose or dare.
Blessed the dawn when others refrain –
peacemakers of God’s domain.
What tonight do they endow,
this dark night, a world on fire?
Father lit the truth somehow,
forgiveness shone through mother.
Dear world, heal those who still applaud
peacemakers, Children of God.
[translated by Menna Elfyn]
[1941]
—————
Parch
This ‘Parch’, the Reverend declaimed pity over piety,
homilies you carried home with you every Sunday,
how he’d tell his flock they needed to be saved from
cliff or crag every single day. Some of us would give
a borrowed smile and say to our better selves that
some needed saving more than others – not us.
He’d tell us his own little stories, illustrations
he called them, twenty minutes worth not
a second longer as he knew of drooped
eyelids, how congregations wander. And so
one day he told us how his own dear son
came home from college having found Jesus.
Iesu Grist!
he said, confessing his occasional swearing,
which made us in our pews feel all the better –
if Parch could sin on Sunday in the pulpit, well
then – we too could be viewed as pure of heart
and blessed ourselves for keeping to the light.
But after he died, we realised what a ‘parch’
he was, when his daughter told us how he’d
be called out on Saturday nights after stop
tap, to knock on the door of a member’s home,
her skinful husband made sure as hell she’d be
too black and blue for morning’s Grace.
And to think that one whiff of Reverend
would make him shudder and slink away, meek
and all lamb. Well, knowing this made us realise
what a real Parch he was to make another soul parched for the rest of the week, all because of
the sight of a Saviour – the Parchedig one. Amen.
[Written in English]
—————
On my way to Albany, NY
Travelling beside the Hudson, tonight,
in its passing, the river came around
us, through glass and woke us.
She, the nun in white opposite, a clean
sheet of paper as spotless as the mouth
of the still water, her face reciting
the perpetual current, and I, thick-lettered,
clothes the colour of the depth’s steepness
underneath, the likeness of my soul, strands
of sight. Suddenly, there appear two swans on
the cheeks of the ice, one black, one white,
drilling into it. Slowly, the sheet gives way, sinks.
A split second, and there comes the flail of feathers,
a torrent of them, flurried undressing,
then they’re one; one pure creation.
Capricious birds, cold winds, their world
gathered on the river like us, on a train,
the human feather troubled or eager
for sunshine and, as we proceed,
how transparent the Hudson becomes, wimpled
or emptily naked. Our goal and our refuge are one.
We spin in the end, voiceless,
grace and gloom freezing our beaks.
Life’s captivity and homelessness
feather me too as we swans
abide, I, one step lower
than her yearning for sky.
[translated by Joseph P. Clancy]
Contents List
11 Rhagair | Preface
[I ]
14 Mercy [EB]
19 Gwen [EB]
22 Given to Legend [EB]
25 Marged Glyndŵr [EB]
26 End Note [ME]*
28 Wedi’r glaw | After the Rain [ME]
30 Fermenting – Eples [ME]
32 Silk in Mind [EB]
33 Female Genitals: Camfflabats [ME]
(translated from original Welsh by Gwerful Mechain)
[II]
37 Stones [ME]*
41 Marbled Men [EB]
43 A Ukrainian Mother [ME]*
44 Horse Chestnut tree in Uppsala [ME]*
45 In Solus and Out [ME]*
46 Gauze in Gaza [ME]*
47 Identity [ME]*
49 Nine for Peace [RM]
51 Queue [ME]*
52 Peacemakers [ME]*
(translated from the original Welsh by Waldo Williams)
[III]
57 Parch [ME]*
59 Amen – Amin [EB]
61 H’m – Humming [EB]
62 No Palm Sunday [ME]*
64 Flower Rota for Sunday [ME]*
66 On my way to Albany, NY [JPC]
68 St Patrick of Banwen [EB]
70 St Govan, Pembrokeshire [GC]
71 Salvation [EB]
74 Y Goeden Ellyg, Y Mans, Pontardawe |
The Pear Tree, The Manse, Pontardawe [ME]
76 Storm in Brooklyn Subway [ME]*
77 Keeping Company
[IV]
81 Water [EB]
83 Clap [ME]*
84 A Sheepish Poem [ME]*
86 Brexit Blues [ME]*
88 Old Language, New [EB]
89 Song of a voiceless person to BT [RST]
[V]
93 Last Gilt [EB]
95 Barn Owl [GC]
96 Workhouse Pigeons [EB]
98 Sardinian’s Dream [EB].
99 The Gift of Giving Way [EB]
.
101 Three poems to Ilhan Sami Çomak
101 1 The Piper [ME]*
101 2 Wild Ponies [EB]
104 3 Rowan [EB]
104 Snowdrops in November [ME]*
105 Henrhyd Falls, Coelbren [EB]
107 Honey Moon [EB]
109 Humming with Mam [EB]
111 Nursing Shawl [EB]
112 At Dylan Thomas’s Boathouse [ME]*
113 Dylan’s Parch [ME]*
114 Merch y Gweinidog: Minister’s daughter [ME]
123 Biographical notes
TRANSLATORS
EB: Emma Baines
JPC: Joseph P. Clancy
GC: Gillian Clarke
ME: Menna Elfyn
ME:* Menna Elfyn (written in English)
RM: Robert Minhinnick
RST: R.S. Thomas
