Missing
by Tris Kerslake
Voices that sing me no more by the turf in Cardiff Arms, chanted anthems rising from the lungs of fifty-thousand Welsh, and for the blood of trampled Frenchmen in the scrum.
The scent of heavy honeyed rain running off Glamorgan hills, and from the further blue, a filmy salt of seasoning encasing all, they are long gone, the precious elegies I once desired.
Slower sunshine on the valley carpeting of butter gorse, and boots awash in bracken’s crush, the rot of oak and beech, tilted drifts of ancient ash that burned on summer nights.
The scrape of lichen-yellow granite walls, the black of crows, resting their nights on chapel sills and sooty rigs of collieries. Their blended colours were the shade of passing times.
Eloquence upon the street that ever raced through costumes, opinionated fancies owing more to who their father was than faith, a harmony of voices humming through their shopping lists.
No black upon my arm for memories, no outward sign, clothed in green and gold I gather descant icons beyond note, and yet, I sometimes crave an older scale.
O bydded i’r hen iaith barhau
(Oh may the old language endure, from 'The Land of My Fathers', Welsh National Anthem)