Ar Lan Y Môr

Ar lan y môr mae rhosys cochion.

In the front seat, his hand a bloodless glove

pressed to the passenger window,

grazing a bard’s palaver of birds with the point

of a stubbed little nail—

charcoal mornings, the bleary light

crumbling art-canvas, open-eyed

seatown galleries spitting oil-skins,

mother-of-pearl tides roll themselves out

like wounded dogs, limping the shores

of all we know

as the crowblack, fishboat-bobbing sea

foaming the ale-coloured glass.

White rose spray on the drowning bar;

the salt-nut crunching crowds.

Some days in a Celtic mood

he will sing the shimmering rain,

roll out his tongue in a London sky

but tasting only ash

remember a hymn in a Swansea voice—

blow every word til the flowering smoke

sheds itself like a rose

in an evening starless and bible-black-- 

suffer the wheeze of city haze

to find the old sea in its lights.