Two Poems by Gillian Clarke
PN Review 44, July - August 1985
Today
Kate in full day in the heat of the sun
looks into the grave, sees in that unearthing
of a Roman settlement, under a stone
only the shadow of a skeleton.
Gwyn on his back in the dark, lying
on the lawn dry from months of drought,
finds in the sky through the telescope
the fuzzy dust of stars he had been searching.
Imprint of bones is a constellation
shining against silence, against darkness,
and stars are the pearly vertebrae
of water-drops against the drought, pelvis,
skull, scapula five million light years old
wink in the glass, and stardust is all we hold
of the Roman lady's negative
in the infinite dark of the grave.
Castell y Bere
So many deaths under unfurling trees
or on banks where primrose makes us dizzy
after ten miles of mountain track -
a lamb's head clean as a toy, the beads
of its vertebrae picked smooth as Hail Maries,
hobby horse, head on a stake, Llywelyn
shorn of his coat to mother-smell an orphan
for the grieving ewe.
In the barn that other lamb
a husk in my hands, delicate and swift
as a chalk horse, its four hooves galloping
nowhere forever in its attitude
of birth, stillborn on its journey, still
in the caul of its skin, not skeleton
but bas-relief, little sea-horse, womb-horse.
In the wood the jay's discarded robe,
barred blue wing-feathers, fallen black arrows
of flight, breast-down cream, rose, terra cotta,
a quiver of feathers, a drop of fresh blood
in calm afternoon but no bird at all.
Then the kestrel on its back in torchlight
dead with Tonfannau's ghostly soldiery
in the deserted military camp.
On a concrete floor littered with glass
and owl-pellets, his royal feathers dressed
impeccably black and gold as heraldry.
His turned head is a skull, his breast
a seethe of hatching spiders.
Gillian Clarke is a poet, playwright, editor, broadcaster, lecturer and translator (from Welsh). She edited the Anglo-Welsh Review from 1975 to 1984, and has taught creative writing in primary and secondary schools and at university level. She is president of Ty Newydd, the writers' centre in North Wales which she co-founded in 1990. Since 1994 she has been a tutor in Creative Writing at the University of Glamorgan. Clarke was the inaugural Capital Poet for Cardiff 2005-6. Her poetry is studied by GCSE and A Level students throughout Britain. She has given poetry readings and lectures in Europe and the United States, and her work has been translated into ten languages.
Her upcoming collection, The Silence, will be published in March 2024 and is a Poetry Book Society Spring Recommendation.
These poems are taken from PN Review 44, July - August 1985. Subscribe to PN Review magazine at pnreview.co.uk.