Prynhawn da. I have with me today Idris whatsisname the doctor. From a lot of blogposts ago. He of the methadone drip and giant insect fetish. Yes that's the one. Anyway he's dead now, but fortunately I can read his mind. He says that last night, or neithiwr in a more efficient language, he was eating some cheese from Caws Cenarth when he fell asleep and had a most astounding dream. When he woke up, he says, dead, he could remember some 200 lines of minestrone soup recipes. But had forgotten the dream. Apart from this fragment, which Tennyson persuaded him to publish as a 'psychological curiosity'. Take it away, Idris' necrotic mind!
The head lay anchor thought weighed down
Below the air, beneath the sound
And under drowned and all around
And spinnered glinting forth and dart
As if in spasmic morte d'art
Anenomes! the tart-pressed flowers
Coral-crusted king-crowned bowers
Swept with besom jewelled broom
- for all the sea was like a loom -
And woven threads the story told
the shuttle fish, the weft the shoaled
the carpet flew in days of old!
And shaken stormy beaten rug
Three friends the winding rock would face
Ascending weather-beaten grace
Up mothward to the spiral light
The granite beacon of the night
The mirrored torch reflect delight
And shutter'd shot the dark with flame
As if through spacetime sliced each frame
There flickered golden shadow dance
Of such exquisite ever lance
had burst the sun and speared the moon
And cast the rocks like seer's rune
Upon the blanket-rippled sky
Onwards! Onwards! was the cry!
They climbed as high and waxen-winged
Met Death awhile and lo he singed
twas frozen there, yet voices pealed
the caves of ice! the land revealed!
they saw that day the night the morn
and found contentment in forlorn
the sorrow cut the cold with warm
Their tears the tapestry did bind
And downward trod the truth on mind
the weight could not be left behind!
Now down the mountain through the mist
they saw it clearer eyes opaque
Remembered paths they'd separate take
And each horizon different saw
And each awashed on different shore
Yet could be island minds no more
The -
REJ:- Ok fuck off Idris. Being dead's no excuse. No, change your own drip. Really? A lighthouse? Well why didn't you say lighthouse? No you didn't...the what? the rocks of sin? I exhumed you for this? Diawl yffern!
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Fuuuuuuuuck,thats good!
ReplyDeleteGorgeous stuff. I thought this my favourite-
"for all the sea was like a loom -
And woven threads the story told
the shuttle fish, the weft the shoaled
the carpet flew in days of old!"
'til I changed my for five different parts. This stuff should be in a blog, or better still a hundred thousand heads.
Magnificent.
ReplyDeleteMade my day. :)
ReplyDeleteTaliesin Ben Beirdd!
ReplyDeleteThat is who you have exhumed.
Wow! I am blown away!
ReplyDeleteGrito!
ReplyDeleteHe's masterly, isn't he? Got it all - fluent, fluid, stylish, elegant poetry that lingers forever. And that backdrop! Richard’s hilarious intros and exits – what a character he has created there. He’s a classic – could imagine a TV series of these. Then there’s the underlying truth that hits home the more you read it. And it repays reading again and again. He did this instantly and easily and it is finished and perfect. He must be published soon.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, Kay. This is not just an "apologies to Coleridge" poem - this has its own insight, its own internal dynamic - and the bookends are just so sweetly brilliant!
ReplyDelete