This poem is taken from PN Review 245, Volume 45 Number 3, January - February 2019.
Llandeilo Churchyard
and other poems
Llandeilo Churchyard (1)
When I went to visit the holy well I found a little child there. He was texting on his
phone. He didn’t look up.
Water lifting water, read the plaque by the estate pump-house.
So much of my life has been spent in postures of waiting. (What literature & faith
hold in common.)
Radiant expectation, the yew’s gathered cloths, the elm’s crippled genuflection.
We are all invited to the Festival of the Senses. Some blindfolded, others as vendors
of blindfolds.
Both waking & sleeping I study lichens. I know more about them in my dreams than in
waking life.
The mowers again, this time in their Welsh masks, their festival masks. I doff my hat &
step aside.
Blue light of the iPhone in the holy well’s dank recess. I make nothing up, I assure you.
I kept walking down that ancient street. Somewhere nearby, a local band covering CCR
(badly, but with conviction).
...
When I went to visit the holy well I found a little child there. He was texting on his
phone. He didn’t look up.
Water lifting water, read the plaque by the estate pump-house.
So much of my life has been spent in postures of waiting. (What literature & faith
hold in common.)
Radiant expectation, the yew’s gathered cloths, the elm’s crippled genuflection.
We are all invited to the Festival of the Senses. Some blindfolded, others as vendors
of blindfolds.
Both waking & sleeping I study lichens. I know more about them in my dreams than in
waking life.
The mowers again, this time in their Welsh masks, their festival masks. I doff my hat &
step aside.
Blue light of the iPhone in the holy well’s dank recess. I make nothing up, I assure you.
I kept walking down that ancient street. Somewhere nearby, a local band covering CCR
(badly, but with conviction).
...
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