Passers-By
We always saw the three-thirty from Blaenhirwaun.
Warm hands clutching our treats, school over
we waited to cross the busy road.
Cross to the homeward side,
to the hills calling us in for tea,
and the soft-uddered cows
lazy in their stalls.
We watched you pass,
your eyes, peering white,
as if detached from flesh and bone,
invading our innocence,
abusing the summer’s day.
Blaenhirwaun. -
The name, easy on our tongues,
belied the dangers of those cavernous depths,
the choking, black-dark of your world.
Today, the memory is locked in my sleep.
The tump is greened.
Its reclaimed contours merge into the rolling hills,
completing a landscape.
The tourists speed past
on their way to the coast.
Excited children cry,
“Look, mummy, lambs.”
A world passes.
magazine list
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- 10th Muse
- 14
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- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
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- Borderlines
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- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
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- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The