EMYR HUMPHRIES.

The Ancestor Worship Cycle

Ancestor Worship

                          1

The dead are horizontal and motionless

They take less room

Than the stones which mark the tomb

But the words they spoke

Grow like flowers in the cracked rock

Their ghosts move easily between words

As people move between trees

Gathering days and sunlight

Like fuel for an invisible fire.

                           2

Grandparents whose portraits hang

Like ikons in our hearts

Carved out acres drew up codocils

To brace our lives

But the new estates cover the fields

All the names are changed and their will

Is broken up by sewers and pylons.

                           3

Our remote ancestors knew better.

They were all poets

They all wove

Syllabic love into their wooden homes

They saw the first invaders come

Pushing their boats through the water meadows

Their teeth and their swords glittering in the stealthy light

And they carved metrical systems out of their own flesh.

                              4

The air is still committed to their speech

Their voices live in the air

Like leaves like clouds like rain

Their words call out to be spoken

Until the language dies

Until the ocean changes.