The theme for June’s Open Mic event at Cafe St James (8 till 10pm, Tuesday 1st June 2021) is Romance, a subject that offers a wide range of opportunities for our local poets to reveal their tender sides.
Patrick’s Glen first appeared in my 2012 collection, Strange Journey, and is a romantic poem with a rhyme scheme that still pleases me.
PATRICK’S GLEN
Beneath a cobalt sky, wind blows the barley heads
as wrens, through ragged hawthorns, drop like tears
and all the voices of ten thousand years
converge in one throat piping in the reeds.
For here scenes are unchanging and unmoved
by all the petty vanities and schemes
and here remain the valleys, rocks and streams
our fathers and our forefathers have loved.
Here stand the granite stones that knew the shout
and felt the drum-led feet of marching men
and smelt the bloody fear along the glen
of tribes advancing or being driven out.
Here stand the stunted trees that stamp defiant now
on shoulders of dead armies crouched beneath the loam
where roots caress the riven shield, the heaume,
the eyeless socket, yellowed tooth and noble brow.
Beneath a cobalt sky you gathered meadow flowers
perhaps to capture pieces of this perfect day
as all-embracing summertime around us lay
and destiny conspired along with earthly powers
to make our bodies bend and shake like barley heads,
our hopes emerge like warriors along the windy glen,
our hearts to drop like wrens and then to rise again,
to harmonise with Time among the swaying reeds.
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