Ffwrnais

Ffwrnais
Fire consumes, soon these broken remnants of humans will be ash,
No sign of the poison will remain in these pathetic frames
No tattoo will be readable, no similarity to be noticed in the bones
Only the question will hang in the choking air: where is God?

Creu
Broken are the stones, shattered are the hopes
There was the force of love, mother to daughter, father to son
Creations hope in the spark of joy in a lover’s eye
Crushed from the heart, despair: where is God?

Gwydr
A cold light hangs there now, rubble where they tried to hide
The vision of their hate. The suitcases of the dead remain
The shoes, the spectacles, the pictures
A clear light – a cold light of reality: where is God?

Gwir
There in the dead shadow of the long cold crematoria
Hangs a being in pain, tortured beyond sound,
Silent, grief carved onto his form, never at peace, not where his children
Were taken, not where his people slain but there is God.

Awen
God hangs in my heart, holding me quiet in my hurt
God hangs in my mind, speaking his words of love
God hangs over my soul, lifting it to hope that never,
Never will anyone ask the darkness: Where is God?

 These words have many inspirations but two  in particular I have  leant on most:   Gwyneth Lewis: The welsh poet wrote these words for the Millennium Centre in Caerdydd, Creu Gwir fel Gwydr o Ffwrnais Awen   'Creating truth like glass from inspiration's furnace”  which gave me the headings. Above all in his memoir of his time in Auschwitz: Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death, Otto Dov Kulka describes a dream of God – which I have clumsily represented under Gwir: truth 

Dreamscape

It seemed, I saw a sea, turquoise

below an azure sky, a few white clouds 

waves rushed on to the silver strand

from which rose a green land of woods and fields

My footsteps led from the water’s edge

To where I stood.  The sea birds wheeled

Above, the wilderness in the voices

Ahead the sand rose gently though the marram grass

The path grew green and the grass

brushed the sand from my feet

birch trees gave way to oak and beech

as I wandered inland heeding a distant call

I passed through the wildwood, the path

Turned along the borders of a stone walled field

The crop was wheat, golden feathered in this

Day of highest summer, the stones lay ahead

A great capstone marked with lichens, held up

from the earth by a broken ring of boulders

and stooping very low I could enter the ancient tomb

and lie on the clean damp earth as once before

  

Inspired by memories of Lligwy, Sir Fon

July2020