Issue 25: Robert Minhinnick
At the Cairns above Blaengarw
(for Phil Cope)
Mynydd Llangeinwyr
Elevation 568 m (1,864 ft)
Prominence 90 m (300 ft)
Listing sub-HuMP, County top
Coordinates 51.6412 N 3.5726 W
Location Bridgend, Wales
OS grid SS 912947
1.
Rubbing our eyes
not robbing our eyes
at a dragonfly above the Garw source
- spring or seepage still unsure -
because it takes hundreds of springs to make one river
but the people who create the cists and the cairns
and the axe factory amongst the thistles
and shrooms must choose locations carefully
rubbing their eyes
and rubbing their eyes
between Steepholm and Pen y Fan
and the Gwyr and the Gwrhyd
as for one day only
or maybe two in their year
the air clears
and they find the world is stretching…
until it is stranger than
Cornwall, Phoenicia, Amerika…
and melting because…Ah!
The psychedelics of sight…
2.
Corn Ddu to Picws Du
and millennia later
the unnameables possess names
miraculously out of language chemistry
but those places had already become ideas
in the old geezers’ minds
and beyond the beyond
a beach like the chief old geezer’s yellow coat
and later twelve farms are built
until the steam coal reveals itself
and then the forests are sown over the farms,
black sitka on their needlebeds
beloved of arsonists and speedway boys
- dragonflies themselves -
and now in masks we drive along
Gwendoline Street and Katie Street
and Oxford Street and Tymeinwr Avenue
and the streetparties are full swing
and another clear morning arrives
on our scratchcard planet
and we stand rubbing our eyes not robbing our eyes
at the people knocking off from the parachute factory
and another shift signing on to pack the gorgeous silks
walking away and walking home
and there is thistledown in the darkness,
its wraiths around us
in King Edward Street and Pwllcarn Terrace
and I know these invisibles are everywhere…
but they are still following a leader’s yellow coat…
*
20 – 29 July 2020
Robert Minhinnick (b. 1952) lives in Porthcawl where he helps administer the charity Sustainable Wales / Cymru Cynaliadwy, which includes the performance space The Green Room (due to restart post Covid). He is a former editor of Poetry Wales (1997-2008) and the author of numerous collections of poetry and prose works; his most recent books are Diary of the Last Man (Carcanet, 2017) and Nia (Seren, 2019).
Copyright © 2021 by Robert Minhinnick, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.
