Busy time recently.Two poems in Roundyhouse 35 - including Yr Ysbryd Glan which I wrote at Aberdaron in the Llyn peninsula. The title means Holy Spirit and Aberdaron was the last parish of the great Welsh poet, R S Thomas. The church was a last stop for pilgrims to Bardsey - the island of 2000 saints. Also, for those with an iPad or iPhone try downloading the free App The Disappearing. My poem The Governor's Bath House is on it. The ideas was to create an App for the city of Sydney which published poems related to the theme of disappearing and which were Sydney focused. Gps technology allows someone to be at a place and summon up a related poem. Mine is located under the place name The Domain though half of the poem relates to the Hero Of Waterloo - the best Irish pub in the southern hemisphere. Also shortlisted in the Fermoy International. I'll post all three here when I get time. Here they are:

YR YSBRYD GLAN*

*The Holy Spirit
(written at St Hywyn’s, Aberdaron - R S Thomas’s last parish)

The organ stop says it all:

 “swell to great”. You tried.

It was hard here, where each

swing of the oak doors bellowed

over pew and stall the rank

smell of soul-wearying work

in sour fields, of returns

diminishing. Other pilgrims,

like books falling shut, folded

here, crooked in prayer over

kneelers on unrequiting stone.

They raised their eyes, as you

might from altar or missal,

seeing windows suck in light,

distort it, like a reverse prism,

to render priests and people

monochrome; mere tintypes

pegged to walls as instructive

bas reliefs, supplicants in a biblical
tragedy happening elsewhere.

All here were hostages to

the faithful  departing. Some

for Bardsey and the saints;

praying against the current,

the chop of the Sound at night,

eyeing moonbows  over the bay

as poor omens. Others, who shared

your liturgical rhythms, looked

in the dark beyond surplice and stole,
to the graves rising from the wave break

up the hill field; each headstone,
in the shadow of the falling sun,

a slate rung on a stone ladder

propped against the cemetery apex.

The sparse assuring detail of name

and date blank to the congregation.

Only anonymous blocks bulked up behind

you;, squat pitons marking

out a long familiar sheer ascent; scored

deep on their backs  where generations

scrabbled for purchase in the heave

above farm, pulpit, tolling bell.

THE GOVERNOR’S BATH HOUSE

(“we know not the builder nor his son” W H Auden)

The governor’s bath house is not there;

a few cubes of stone

stand still, the rest crated and carted

by command to a new project. A tour guide

slips me a story about governors – Bligh,

Brisbane, Macquarie, Darling – I can walk

their streets, drink in their bars, but see

instead the mason’s initials chiseled neat

on the stone face.

                        At the Hero of Waterloo

rub a finger over a shamrock, a careful

“TM” cut below – the sandstone yielding

to the tool as a lover to an embrace;

graffito of a craftsman transported,

repossessing his self in shameless lavish

of his time.

Take the black candlestick

in the museum – convict’s section – mere

turnings, shards of metal wrought, twisted

compelled to become something degraded

scrap had no right to be – a carrier of light.

The governor’s bath house is not there.