The Sanctum of Sanity

Requiem for the Rhondda

Picture by Elwyn Thomas a Rhondda Valley artist

Here, in these steep valleys

dreams were born.

Shorn of inherited illusion

I cast an Englishman’s eye

upon this skyline of

dark hills and dying chimneys.

A place where trees, like men

Are stunted from fire’s hunger

to consume both fuel and

feelings in time’s tumultuous flames,

and the most wonderful women

on earth beckon a welcome

from worn doorsteps.

The need now,

is to understand how

women scrimped and scraped

whilst boys escaped,

to leave these valleys

raped of coal,  to old men,

their faces full of forgetting,

and, to grieving girls

whose lilting voices and

lovely bodies weaved magic

between mountains and mountings.

In the shade of once green hills,

And tall towers of  fruitful trees,

eaves of slate still cast familiar shadows

in narrow streets,

and something beats

which tames time’s

relentless tick and fearful tock.

To see beauty here

requires a nearness, denied.

A growing, a knowing,

a sowing of seeds

with people not places.

To see in the faces

ancestral expressions

that transcend chapels,

and choirs and dragons

and rugby and leeks, but

speaks of these valleys

with authentic voices;

rejoicing  a birth of belonging,

stranding strangers like me

on shores of loathing and longing.

© James Rainsford 2012

Note to readers: Posted as my contribution to Open Link Night at dVerse Poets.

This was written some time ago, as a tribute to a time I once spent visiting the mining valleys of South Wales. 

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Kind regards to all at dVerse Poets. James.