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Phil Maillard

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Valley Of The Rocks

What I bring
and what you bring
and what’s HERE

The compulsion
of perception

Dead trees
breeding monsters

The mind’s a hunter of forms
venator formarum

And histories

Past the lurched-backed side-slewed church
along the deep lane
under the Graig

Valley of the Rocks
Temenos
Arena

Ferns and sheep runs
Sloes and little stony summits
of ash trees on cliff rubble

Rockfall hollow

Origins/Creations:

Landslip at the whip end
of the quake line?
                   Marcle Hill
               Dorstone
          Skirrid
     Valley of the Yoke
 Notch of the Graig

Or lightning-struck hill-cleft?

Or the rending
of Heaven and Earth
in the darkness of the Crucifixion?

The deflected chancel
         The moon turned to blood

Raven hassling
a peregrine
up on the cliff

Peaks and waves and
troughs

Clear spot
for a trip
Hatterall
Allt-yr-Haul
Toward the Sun
Pointing the only way

Beyond my questions
Before my answers

To change
To open
To maintain

To remember
the present
and yes to remember
love’s face
Sun-face

To tread
light

To watch
the details

 

i.m. T. Leary
“Cheerleader for evolution”

And for the Centenary of
David Jones’ birth
“I have looked for a long while”
at the textures and contours”


Cwmyoy
above Llanthony
Black Mountains
July ‘96

 

Page(s) 147-148

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