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David Barnett

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Maesycrugiau Churh

Above the Teifi’s bluster,
it towers over its knoll.

Snub it is, entire,
nudging the sky, airing
the claims of its descent
from spring or ring of stones.

Nave’s freed only
at a Sabbath and when
a girl-suicide, man
with his finesse, bob
along a crackly track
between the trim grass
and away from the vault,
yew-gloomy, that’s kept for
a baronet and his kin.

Wicket-gate clicks.
Village lies distant, its parishioners
outside death’s seep
across the rough fields
and the sloping oaks,
howls from a hound,
halloos from an owl.

So they choose to hope
as they gossip past
a prone holly-bush
and a thrush-lump
on a blanched sundial.

Best to do, chance,
cram, in a cone
of light that quickly folds
into the bones of those
who shuffle or strut before
they’re borne past a hollow
snail-shell to a row
of stones, black as crepe.

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