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Raymond Humphreys

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London Welsh

1: London

'Caewch y drws!'
'Mae hi'n bwrw glaw'
'Bara caws a cwrw.'
I thought that these were things that English people said:
didn't understand why they laughed in school,
nor when I said 'thruppence'.

The place that my mother called 'down home'
only awoke paint-box images
of steep streets and hills at the end of a cloud:
slate grey, misty green, and always wet.

Where did my father learn this foreign speech
that he sometimes spoke swiftly with his brothers?
Not often: even the dog tipped its head
when he slipped his tongue so easily
around the strange consonants.

Later, I didn't mind.
I was different, I was Welsh.


2. Wales

And now I live in Wales.
I've been here for thirty years.

I've visited the bleak uplands
where my people scratched their living.
I've seen worn headstones:
'Ffarwel blant a ffarwel briod,
Ffarwel bopeth yn y byd.'
I know the names of Llywelyn,
Glyndwr, and even Mary Jones.

'Ah, but you're not really Welsh, are you?'
says some Smith or Brown from Treorchy,
whose grandfather followed the coal in nineteen-ten.

But I don't really mind.
I'm different: I'm a cockney.

Page(s) 61-62

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