JOHN TRIPP
A Note from Plwmp
With a name like that
we had to stop. It conjuredpictures
of fat friendly shopkeepers
and comfortable landladies, gossiping in Welsh.
True enough, they gave us bacon and sandwiches
and tea for two florins.
Around the corner a student
hot from Aber was painting road-signs.
I looked at this piece of Wales -
old, hospitable, rebellious
still weaving the lingo on a taut loom
they kept to a bardic codicil
boxed and clean on the shelf of speech.
Down south it dropped like a fart
at Elizabeth's table, as strange as English
in Sebastopol. It cut like a lost lament
through the fat twang of merchants.
Only a gull's flight from Mersey
They stitch this lexicon,
laying new pages and mending the old.
That student had a brave new pluck:
he risked Judge Jeffries and the cold assize,
the grey wigs who push a plainsong
back down the throat.
We left little Plwmp like pilgrims
who had just seen Jordan,
knowing the sea dawns would break
over the language of Cardigan.
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