Any comments on the following poem will be gratefully received!
Choughs at Llechwedd Slate Quarry
She shuns the soft pink cliffs of South Stack (or the sea-pinked cliffs of South Stack?)
for the company of hard men
who break their backs to roof the world.
Her Kyaa Kyaa call bounces
off wing-black cavern walls,
mingles with the chink
of chisel on slate,
the rumble of the tram,
the wheeze of miners.
The red of her legs and down-curved bill
is mirrored in the dusty eyes of men
who grin as their bran goesgoch
tumbles in with scavenged wool
and they dream that they are Arthur’s
acrobatic crow, tumbling over Yr Wyddfa,
admiring their reflections in bottomless Glaslyn.
Note: Choughs have nested in Llechwedd Slate Caverns, North Wales on and off since Victorian times. The chough is sometimes known as Bran Arthur (Arthur’s crow) or bran goesgoch (red-legged crow )in Welsh.
This is lovely, Sarah.
Erm… I wonder if you actually need the first three lines? Starting with Kyaa kyaa starts right in there with the bird, and maybe we don’t need the South Stack reference and the hard men roofing the world as they’re covered by the title.
Thanks Robbie, I’m rather attached to my ‘hard men’ but I’m pondering on their loss……
I know what you mean, now that I’ve read it again. Maybe you could simply make it all one stanza – perhaps that was intended anyway. I think the separation of the first three lines is giving them an added weight.
Sea-pinked rather than soft?
Thanks Robbie. Much appreciated.
WOW, lovely poem and so much covered in so few lines… just wondering if the 4th line could just be the call, Kya Kya and not have the prose explanation of the call and what it is doing, I think given the title we’ll get its the call?… As in maybe “Kya kya bounces off black cavern walls..” wing black kind of confused me.
I love the idea of the men dreaming of being the bird – is it possible to say this more directly and yet not loose the reference of arthur’s crow – if you get what I mean?
its a powerful poem, packed with so many layers, lovely
Thank you for your comments Fiona. I’d forgotten this poem, written a couple of years ago. Perhaps time to fiddle with it again! Thanks!