MENNA ELFYN.

Cell Angel.

Poems in memory of

Gwyn A. Williams

    (1925 - 1995)

Driver

"I was 54 yesterday. Everything I now do is a race against the undertaker. I can't waste any more time."

                                    Gwyn A. Williams

Driver

Dear driver, you made every journey a joy ride

Between deep stream and canyon. Everything a challenge

and the metal jumping round you...

assault on accelerator, squabble with brakes, friction

between lane and bushes. Every creature in flight

hearing you paddle gears to old age.

Moon retired to her convent, to her rosaries of grief

because you were highwayman every acre of the way,

a steel bull on the dogmas of tarmac.

Windscreen quaked, wiper blinked like an eyelid

to and fro, obedient to its thankless destiny -

more often than not, you made the hedge partner

closed with it - how humble the boundary dyke -

to avoid clash and crack of the stunned cars

that were, unwillingly coming round you. A hair's breadth,

a labyrinth, between collision and earth. You diverted

every other helm; wheels scattered to exile,

slid on the black ice of your storm. Your lights flashed -

red ones always - delinquent, skidding, spinning -

your car, like a curfew of fireworks for creatures,

every night took part in a mountain rally.

But there's another screen shut fast tonight;

prostrate and battered, nothing thrills through him;

Wales has one less rash driver through the ages.

And you've gone on that last fine journey

through the Imaginations Portal, uncursingly quiet,

on the main road, stitch by stitch, in a spotless carriage,

silks all around you! A curtained limousine

driven so discreetly, so with the grain - safely -

never crossing white lines, or cutting a corner.

                    Translated by Tony Conran