Gwyneth Lewis: From Angle

From Angle
To Les

You’ll know from the pause between your last letter

And this I’m not well. You and I hear

Each other’s depression round half the world—

No answer, and you know I’m curled

Under the duvet and in the dark.

It’s passing now, so I’m down in Angle

To walk it off. At St Mary’s—medieval—

A few of us worship

With Gerald of Wales, priest of this strip

Of fields on a western peninsula.

There’s a chapel of rest for drowned sailors,

The sea’s cold fruit.

It’s blowing a gale

Today and I took shelter inside the walls

Of the Castlemartin Pound

Which doubles up as a round‑

About. In fourteen eighty

It was a pinfold “for impounding stray

Cattle, redeemed … on payment of a fine.”

Today the pound’s a tiny garden

Of suburban uglies: Laurel, Hydrangea,

Privet, berried Cotoneaster

And a palm that’s a fistful of venetian blinds

Being shaken. Mine, all mine.

We are the risen dead. Since that day

After a class in Hay-on-Wye

You’ve been one of my Dads.

You saw the shadow burning in me

(A relative of the one you bear)

And you weren’t scared. We’ve survived

The furnace of Nebuchadnezzar,

The walk in white heat, then the despair

Of being ourselves, enfleshed in that shame

That can kill, though it take a long time.

My father died. I’m crying stones,

Not tears. Today I hate him

For being human. I knew he was dying

When his eyes rolled up in his head

Just as, on telly a baby’s distracted

By the sound boom hovering overhead.