Tony Conran (Blodeuwedd) 'A Square of Grey Slate'

TONY CONRAN

Blodeuwedd

A Square of Grey Slate

(Presented to Pedro Pérez Sarduy, Cuban poet, at the Wales-Cuba Resource centre at the National Eisteddfod 1985, in Rhyl)

Days I have been wondering, Señor,

How I should speak:

The very language I use being wrong

For Eisteddfod week.

And yet I'm not satisfied

To mumble it glumly

As a mere lingua franca

Between Cuba and Cymru.

My tongue's my own, True Thomas says.

How then

Can I speak in the crowding name of all Welsh

Women and men.

To offer you, Señor, the brotherhood

Of Welsh Wales?

How can I strike red fire from the very iron

Of our chains?

This morning early, I went to my rainy garden

Hoping to find

A messenger - perhaps a riddle

Of times out of mind -

A palimpest of my people, a forgotten tryst

That I could keep

For them this monday morning

Of Eisteddfod week.

There in the path was this square of grey slate.

Let that stone

Be my herald, I said, let its mute cry down the years

Atone

For my English. Let it speak

Where I cannot

Of the Welshness of Chop Wales

Now, on this spot.

Men die here for stone. The ancient strata eroded

By rain, by frost,

Till the massif's a mere negative

Of what it was...

Señor, stone is the stuff of oppression

In this land.

Look , the conqueror's castles, Rhuddlan, Rhuthun, Denbigh,

Still stand.

No one in Wales is untouched by rock.

Coal and slate

- Laid down before dinosaurs walked the world -

Dominate.

Vast tracts of our industry, our past.

It was for stone

That the shanty-towns mushroomed

To chapel and home.

Rock was our vortex. Our working class

was drilled from it.

Their dream and their discipline answered

The greed of the rich.

Strike. Lock-out. Depression.

Let this stone lip

Tell of those terrible years.

Now, slate-tip, coal-tip

Rear up like pyramids. Pharrraoh and Israelite

Share

The memorial of the dump

Under wide air.

Welsh poets in love, Llywelyn Goch, Dafydd or Iolo,

Used to sing

Poems to thrush or tomtit, salmon or north wind

- Anything

Under the moon that moved, he'd make it

Ambassador,

Messenger, llatai for him, to travel

Straight to his girl's door

And tell her how much he loved her

And how much

He died, died for the sight of her,

Died for her touch.

Now therefore I command this square of grey slate

To go llatai for me

Through Westerlies and Trades

To the Carib Sea.

Go, little Fidelista of slate,

To the midmost

Of the Americas, where the plumes of royal palm

Mark Cuba's coast.

Go to the sugarcane fields, the rice paddies,

The orchards -

Go where the blacks once died like flies

As the cash flowed northwards.

And tell them, slateling, about our country,

This place of stone

At the edge of Capital's shadow

As the day comes on.