Wales Wales ...
Land of my mother.
and my Welsh speaking
grandfather.
Land of Eistedfoddau every
year in school.
Land of Dylan Thomas
when I was young and never
easy.
Land of song and the music
of words.
Land my English father
adopted.
Land I loved and left
so long ago I forget my
connection,
until I go ‘home’ and
it slips back on
like I never left.
‘Come by yer and say
that an I’ll smash you face in’.
‘Swansea girls are so
common’, my mother said.
Land of ... memories
Bobby’s
immaculately-pressed psychedelic shirts
and
Jones the Stone - getting drunk and falling asleep
on
the display marble grave in his father’s shop.
Skipping
school to eat chips and pickled onions,
walk
by the docks where old bedsteads and junk
stuck
out of the water, not like now all posh,
‘don’t
use that word’, my mother again,
‘it’s
so-o common’. Don’t say ‘toilet’ say lav-a-try’.
The
Small Faces and schools-out-for-evah.
Goin’
down Langland or Caswell
to
swim in the ‘Surf’s Up’ cold sea,
flirt
with boys like Bronco Evans
and
hold his hand crossing the rocks,
stopping
for a snog every few yards.
Putting on dark glasses so me and Stella
can
look old enough to buy a litre of cider,
then
drink it in 3 minutes flat,
laughing
and spluttering and falling about.
Skimming
pebbles in Bracelet Bay,
drive
down the long summer days
to
Oxwich and Three Cliffs and Rhossili.
‘Where
you goin?’ ‘Up the Beaufort, you coming?’
Or
sitting in the Ups, talking to Tommy Trumpet
for
hours over half a pint, talking rubbish ‘existential’ philosophy
and
singing Wild Rover - No Nay Never no more.
Watching
Barry John and JJ and JPR
show
the English how to play rugby.
Gwlad!
Gwlad! Plaediol oeth im Gwlad...
Siarad Cymraeg? Dim
diolch.
No, not in Swansea,
eliminated by the English
long ago.
Welsh, even after all
these years away.
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