Thursday 3 September 2009

Welsh Landscape


This was the first poem I learned by heart. And the picture is a second version of one I did for my father, now long-lost. It's a bit sword-and-sorcery, but it was a long time ago. Anyway, here's the poem.

Welsh Landscape R S Thomas
To live in Wales is to be conscious
At dusk of the spilled blood
That went into the making of the wild sky,
Dyeing the immaculate rivers
In all their courses.
It is to be aware,
Above the noisy tractor
And hum of the machine
Of strife in the strung woods,
Vibrant with sped arrows.
You cannot live in the present,
At least not in Wales.
There is the language for instance,
The soft consonants
Strange to the ear.
There are cries in the dark at night
As owls answer the moon,
And thick ambush of shadows,
Hushed at the fields' corners.
There is no present in Wales,
And no future;
There is only the past,
Brittle with relics,
Wind-bitten towers and castles
With sham ghosts;
Mouldering quarries and mines;
And an impotent people,
Sick with inbreeding,
Worrying the carcase of an old song.

14 comments:

  1. "There is no present in Wales,And no future;There is only the past,"

    Sadly, he's right there. There is only the past here, and this part of Wales is run by those who are willing to sacrifice the present and the future for it.

    A country that lives only in the past is stagnant, suffocating.... dying.

    When I read that poem, I wondered if RS was pointing that out?

    love
    chrissie
    xxx

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  2. "...And an impotent people,
    Sick with inbreeding..."

    Erm...bagsie you go first reading that bit out in a Cardiff pub ;-)

    Love the picture :-)

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  3. Well, I'm actually Welsh - born in Cardiff, lived in Barry - so I feel entitled to comment.

    Have to say RS was speaking for a bleaker Wales than I knew in my youngest days. Barry was sunshine, sea and ice cream, with docks to play in, and no Welsh spoken at all except in school, where it was compulsory up to O level. My Wales was the Land of Song and bathing beauty contests at Butlin's.

    But we knew there was a darker Wales up the Valleys. I remember going up to Treorchy with a lad called Peter Jones who lived nearby, presumably on the train with his Dad. It was about 1960. We were visiting his grandmother. She lived in a shabby terraced house, and the chief thing I recall about it was how dirty it was - black coal dust everywhere, trodden in from the street outside. I don't suppose she had the energy left to notice. I remember her huddled over a black cooking range, and that there was dark green paint everywhere in that room. Outside there was a lot of broken glass and I found a wonderful piece shaped like a pyramid of ice that I kept for years. As you do.

    Once went on a school coach trip to Brecon, but even there RS would have been out of place. I'm sure he was much further north, deep in the mountains of mid-Wales, in a land of hill farmers. As described in 'Evans' and 'Ninetieth Birthday' and 'On The farm'.

    Incidentally, I'm only Welsh by birth. On Mum's side they hailed from Sweden, hence my fair colouring. On Dad's from the West Country, hence my buccaneering spirit. Ha ha.

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  4. I remember studying that one for 'O' Level, along with Ted Hughes' 'Death of a Pig' and other jolly rhymes. It's kind of surprising I ended up in the literature game, really.

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  5. He did enjoy playing the curmudgeon, didn't he, Chrissie? -I've been pondering this business of living in the past, and I suspect that it's more me than them, as it were; in my last trip to Wales I found that at least some people had been Getting On With It.

    Thank you, Jo. After you with the Cardiff pub.

    RS was born in Cardiff too, Lucy; though, as you note, he spent most of his time in the north. I remember thst dark green paint; it was National Coal Board green, I suspect; just about every terraced house in the village had the same front door in dark green. Then the 70s came along and they started expressing their individuality by installing doors with frosted glass panes, and sand-blasting the sooty walls (or pebble-dashing or mock-stone cladding them). The Valleys folk always showed a lamentable reluctance to live picturesquely.

    I actually read it for fun, Charlie. Bet you liked it really. Go on...

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  6. We took the children to see 'Wales' and ended up in a busy shopping centre. We didn't even hear Welsh being spoken. I don't know where the place we went to on Sunday school trips went.

    I clicked on your picture, there is a lot going on - magic and mystery:

    "Brittle with relics,
    Wind-bitten towers and castles
    With sham ghosts;"

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  7. My mum's family is part Welsh, I wonder if that has anything to do with her clinging to the past... Hmm..

    Great drawing, I love it! Yes, very swords and sorcery, but in a good way.

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  8. I have just returned from a visit to Aberdaron.

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  9. "We took the children to see 'Wales' and ended up in a busy shopping centre" -that's a great line, Anji, and could apply to the UK generally....

    There's a special word for it, Chandira: 'hiraeth', that warm glow you get from looking backwards. I think I got tainted when I was there too...

    Hi Neil! Any marks of the poet about the town? The RS Thomas Tea Shoppe ("a pot of tea, a scone with margarine, a bit of a scowl") ?

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    Replies
    1. What did they used to say? "Come home to a real fire, buy a holiday home in Wales..."?

      Is that what you were meaning by warm glow?

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  10. Actually Dru, no - nothing at all - of course, in the lovely church there are some examples of his poetry and so on - overall, I enjoyed being there - reminiscent of the Gower peninsula - when we eventually arrived - it is a tiresome drive - we had tea and Welsh cakes - looked around - taking photograph, including one from the back of the church - the quintessential view towards Bardsey Island. RS Thomas apart - there is/was that end of the rainbow feeling - somewhere I wanted to visit when, as a child, the geography of Wales appeared to be the only subject on the curriculum. Do I detect a mild hint of sarcasm in your comment Dru?

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  11. Not sarcasm, Neil; I very much liked Aberdaron and the Lleyn in general, and would have been very surprised and even disappointed if they'd tried to make a tourist attraction of him. But then since he was prone to jumping over fences to avoid his parishioners, that seemed unlikely... that reminds me, though; not made bara brith for ages. Hunting down a proper bit of bara brith is as tricky as finding a decent cornish paaaasty further south. In my experience. Job for today!

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  12. I tried to like Wales, visited several times from childhood onwards and only came away with bad memories of hostile locals and misery except for a visit to Portmerion...

    I remember my sisters trying to sleep in beds with constant wailing squeaks which would scare you witless if on the soundtrack to a horror film and I have never been so thoroughly child to the bone or soaked to the skin as on Welsh holidays.

    Then te blogs about Welsh health service started to appear...

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  13. Spell unchecker messed up! Second go...

    I tried to like Wales, visited several times from childhood onwards and only came away with bad memories of hostile locals and misery except for a visit to Portmerion...

    I remember my sisters trying to sleep in beds with constant wailing squeaks which would scare you witless if on the soundtrack to a horror film and I have never been so thoroughly chilled to the bone or soaked to the skin as on Welsh holidays.

    Then te blogs about Welsh health service started to appear...

    ReplyDelete