GILLIAN CLARKE

At Ystrad Fflur

No way of flowers at this late season.

Only a river blossoming on stone

and the mountain ash in fruit.

All rivers are young in these wooded hills

where the abbey watches and the young Teifi

counts her rosary on stones.

I cross by a simple bridge constructed

of three slim trees. Two lie across. The third

is a broken balustrade.

The sun is warm after rain on the red

pelt of the slope, fragmentary through trees

like torches in the dark.

They have been here before me and have seen

the sun's lunulae in the profound

quietness of water.

The Teifi is in full blood and rich

with metals: a torc in a brown pool

gleaming for centuries/

I am spellbound in a place of spells. Cloud

changes gold to stone as their circled bones

dissolve in risen corn.

The river races for the south too full

of summer rain for safety, spilt water

whitening low lying fields.

From oak and birchwood through the turning trees

where leaf and hour and century fall

seasonally, desire runs.

Like sparks in stubble through the memory

of the place, and a yellow mustard field.

s a sheet of flame in the heart.