Status Updates From Cinderbiter: Celtic Poems

from "The Owl-Court of Ifor Hael"
(Welsh, by Evan Evans, 1731–1733):

Where are the poets?
the bard and storied-harp?

or the generous lord,
with a cup of wine at his arm?

...

For all fame's
beating of shields

there are no ramparts here
jutting through this ivy,

just a moon-blue cry
from the thin, black branches.





And you thought Pound started Imagism.

from "The Turn in the Road" (Welsh, from traditional verse, seventeenth century):

Past forty,
a man can carry

the flush
of a tree in leaf,

or shoulder a
quiver of speech.

He can laugh quietly
over his scars.

[2/2]

I am bent with weeping.
This blue dream
chucks the salt from me.

I remember
the walls god-bright
with the king’s theology

…

The saints are scattered now.

The high arch
is an ivy tangle.
The stink of fox
is the only swinging incense.

…

My face has earnt
the grim mask.
My heart a husk.

But my hand. My hand
reaches through this sour air
and touches
the splendid darkness
of my deliverer.

[1/2] Sleepless near the Pacific—hardly peaceful, roaring enough to wake and needle me like nettle—I beach-walked by a half-moon. This poem was with me and stopped being distant that night (from “The Ruins of Timoleague Abbey” by Sean O’Coileain):

I am gut-sad.

I am flirting
with the green waves,
wandering the sand,
feeding reflection
into the seaweed’s foam.

…

I am in my remembering.