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.