National Poet of Wales

Mother Tongue

You’d hardly call it a nest,
just a scrape in the stones,
but she’s all of a dither
warning the wind and sky
with her desperate cries.

If we walk away
she’ll come home quiet
to the warm brown pebble
with its cargo of blood and hunger,
where the future believes in itself,

and the beat of the sea
is the pulse of a blind
helmeted embryo afloat
in the twilight of the egg,
learning the language.

c. Gillian Clarke, National Poet of Wales 2008

Y Fflam

for Gwyn Thomas

For so long the flame has flickered
at the cromlech, at the crossroad,
in encampment, hovel and castle,
in the courts of minor princes.

Song by firelight, gleam of a sword,
the quiver of a harp string,
reflections in the faces
of those entranced by listening.

The word is out. It crosses
centuries, each one a flame,
every syllable a heartbeat,
every song a torch in the dark.

Gwyn, we meet at the ford
to speak in tongues,
to pass on simple truth,
to torch the lies, the weasel words,

burn off the fog of politics
with poetry’s flame
to illuminate
the mind’s manuscript.


Gillian Clarke, National Poet of Wales 2008