MENNA ELFYN

Cell Angel

Life's Sweeping Canvass

She was a glass house, through and through. Herself and her husband and her father before her. A long line of large windows

bellying into a bay. But sometimes a storm

would spit spitefully at one of her panes. Leaving

a long dribble, like a true-blue varicose vein.

Beyond her gables there's another house, doubled-storied

though, historically, made of cob. It reminisces loudly

about squares of newspaper speared on a hook

in the bog in the garden. It remembers its roots

but double glazing deadens any sound

which might chill the pale-pink flow of its blood.

On the horizon there's a farmhouse. Walls wail into the wind,

recalling limewash. It has crazed, like a cataract, but remembers days

when hands helped each other. Today it wonders

whether the bank owns it. Or is it that old bachelor

who sells it off, piece by piece, every year,

as bungalows mass, a black cloud.

on the soil of my country there are many mansions

Yet as we survive each season, and our bricks crumble

and the sky rises, a white blank above us,

we see that we didn't need glass after all, we're a nation

of clay and small stones. Gravel's enough.

Our blind castles still stand - our threadbare canvas won't patch their windows.

And beyond them there's a narrow line to a mountain-top

and a little-used kiosk, cauled in plastic,

a stubborn shelter. Just in case. For desperate people to squat in.

Inside, ringing, ringing - as someone, somewhere

makes a call, from a very long distance, to Wales.