Just Another Jim

Poetry

A PRIEST TO HIS PEOPLE

Men of the hills, wantoners, men of Wales,

With your sheep and your pigs and your ponies, your sweaty females,

How I have hated you for your irreverence, your scorn even

Of the refinements of art and the mysteries of the Church,

I whose invective would spurt like a flame of fire

To be quenched always in the coldness of your stare.

Men of bone, wrenched from the bitter moorland,

Who have not yet shaken the moss from your savage skills,

Or prayed the peat from your eyes,

Did you detect like an ewe or an ailing wether,

Driven into the undergrowth by the nagging flies,

My true heart wandering in a wood of lies?

You are curt and graceless, yet your sudden laughter

Is sharp and bright as a whipped pool,

When the wind strikes or the clouds are flying;

And all the devices of church and school

Have failed to cripple your unhallowed movements,

Or put a halter on your wild soul.

You are lean and spare, yet your strength is a mockery

Of the pale words in the black Book,

And why should you come like sparrows for prayer crumbs,

Whose hands can dabble in the world’s blood?

I have taxed your ignorance of rhyme and sonnet,

Your want of deference to the painter’s skill,

But I know, as I listen, that your speech has in it

The source of all poetry, clear as a rill

Bubbling from your lips; and what brushwork could equal

The artistry of your dwelling on the bare hill?

You will forgive, then, my initial hatred,

My first intolerance of your uncouth ways,

You who are indifferent to all that I can offer,

Caring not whether I blame or praise.

With your pigs and your sheep and your sons and holly-cheeked daughters

You will still continue to unwind your days

In a crude tapestry under the jealous heavens

To affront, bewilder, yet compel my gaze.