To be born in Wales,
Not with a silver spoon in your mouth
But, with music in your blood
And with poetry in your soul,
Is a privilige indeed.

Your inheritance is a land of Legend,
Of love and contrast
A land of beauty so bright it burns the eyes.
Of ugliness that scars the Spirit
As the Earth.

Wales is an old land with wounds
That weep in hills.
They wept before in the bodies of men
And in the hearts of women
And time will never heal them.

The stigmata of sorrow,
Of pain and poverty,
Of lonely crucifixtion in the dark,
Remain our lives to feed.

The Land of our Fathers was built on coal,
It's rivers of mingled blood and sweat
Have forever darkened it,
Relieved only by death.

We are a sad people,
Our sadness being wrapped in harps and music
And praise to God
For the lovely, yearning light
That feeds the Spirit as well as the eyes.

..................

In grandmother's house
The shiny kettle hissed on the hob,
Ready and warm,
A Welsh welcome.
A fire that never goes out.

Grandmother, family-proud and so of house,
With hob black-leaded,
Glistening like a raven's wings
And brass like gold
Untarnished.

Her kitchen smelling of oilcloth
And beeswax and Brasso
The Welsh-dresser and chemille-plush
And white china dogs, like sentinels
Guarding the mantlepiece.

A Bible used so much it never needed dusting,
A rocking chair that moves
In silent motion, beholding
The Dad no longer there.

But there was always love
To wash around you like a healing tide
To cleanse the sore places,
Childish sorrows and tremulous tears.

To her the Welsh are bound,
A matriarchal Nation,
The umbilical cord that's ne'er severed
As we span our Earthly lives.

......................

There are preachers, aged men
With salvation in their souls
And Hell-fire damnation
In their breath.

The Welsh are a nation of preachers,
Of minstrels and bards,
Of night-shirted Druids
With mistletoe in their hair.

Reverent of learning and education
As an escape from the darkness
Of the mind and of the Pits
That collier's compass.

.......................

To be a child in Wales
Is to be a child in Paradise.
The mountains worn smooth by timeless backsides
Covered in serge-suiting that shines like polished glass.

With lairs where foxes live.
Streams so clear and cold
They freeze your blood as if to ice
And glow your cheeks.

Her rivers rusted with slime and bedsprings
And with tins that caught minnows,
Ferns that crackel underfoot
Where Adders live.

There are Welsh babies snug in flannel.
Chapels with encrusted tombstones
With leaves and moss.
Shiny black Bibles bound in Brass.

-- I can't remember the author ---