Elegy for the Britons

A light of winter in the sky 

A taste of metal in the wind

A hunger a cold devouring of light

A people adrift lost

A long drift, drags across the shore

A broken ship’s bones break the sullen wave

A lost dream is for a moment seen

A torn heart falls to the sea foam

A promise torn from a book of lies

A picture of the wise fool flutters

A banner proclaiming false hope

A tired breeze shakes through the litter

A darkness fills the heart of

A people who once saw 

A broken person as

A chance to help

A lie here, a sad whisper and all they see

A burden, a competitor

A foreigner, a different dreamer

A thing not a brother or sister in need

Where the word of hope, 

Where the prophet of joy,  

Where the lord of men

Where the teacher of truth, 

Where the priest of love

Where the carrier of light,  

Where the healer of pain

Where the restorer of the broken

There are some holy places

What makes a holy place ?

Is it a church  or or a mosque ?

Is it an ancient tomb of our far distant ancestors?

Is it a special wild place - a sacred grove or quiet cove

There is one place that has all this

I know an island,  rich in farmland,

but where the bones of the earth  show through.

Here and there are the stones raised up

This for a reason we don't know,

These are a burial chamber for an ancient community

These for the great King

These make a village from when Claudius was emperor

These make a church  made by Padrig

and these one for Tyslio

and these make a Ty Ddu

These fold and twist to make beds for the seals

these washed smooth by the sea trap the waters of the lagoon

These old and strange, still hidden,

supports love's island,   these make the lighthouse.

Here the stone is crushed and washed  into a sandy cove,

Here the great shifting sands are trapped beneath Marram and Pine

and somehow hold rich lakes

Here the risen stones  enclose the holy spring

and the monks church

Here the still resting  rock make the cliffs for

Bran Coesgoch to dance over in summer and shelter

on the greensward for winter

Here the stones were ripped from the

earth, torn, broken. destroyed, burnt  for the metal, the colour of my nieces hair

other colours still stain the great pit  and the dead ponds still squarely

lie at the foot of the hill

This is a Holy place, this is a sacred home,

a place that gives sustenance to many

a place that hold magic spaces

a place that shelters its people

a place that ordinary lives are lived in