the swansea poets

 the swansea poets

to walk there where they walked

dylan thomas vernon watkins 

nigel jenkins peter thabit jones 

et al  et al  et al  et al 

ways rings hollow

this hello like mun boys

the cadenced swansea sons of the meter 

at their kadhoma oozings

the gower wind buffeting

all of town’s smoke eastwards

leaving the clean air of their words

for the discerning of the fine birds

not the workings of the sulphur 

in the grime-nailed words of toil

can one soak it in

the mysteries of their meeting

or absorb it from their foot-stepped

ground sitting sunny days

or the blood town days drunk

in the docking of the world’s trade winds

hymn-booked along the archdeacon bay

dare be not enough to speak 

like the poetry of those times

the impudence of thinking you could belong

to a treasured genre may it be allowed

but where birth by default has left

the swaddling of their shroud

the only page upon which to write

all the wrong words written right

well here i am see bachgen bach 

here i cwtch not in crumpled piles of words

but on my iPad spinning faster times

so lay not around the barbed wire 

of the genuflected times of old

but open the viewed gates of the fields

and coast of rising seas my friends

see the setting sun down west

well now

it always says that best

is yet to come again

and settle today’s memes

in the reams of dreams and themes

and themes

for here am i 

i am me

not them

you see

just me