To live in Wales is to be conscious <br />At dusk of the spilled blood <br />That went into the making of the wild sky, <br />Dyeing the immaculate rivers <br />In all their courses. <br />It is to be aware, <br />Above the noisy tractor <br />And hum of the machine <br />Of strife in the strung woods, <br />Vibrant with sped arrows. <br />You cannot live in the present, <br />At least not in Wales. <br />There is the language for instance, <br />The soft consonants <br />Strange to the ear. <br />There are cries in the dark at night <br />As owls answer the moon, <br />And thick ambush of shadows, <br />Hushed at the fields' corners. <br />There is no present in Wales, <br />And no future; <br />There is only the past, <br />Brittle with relics, <br />Wind-bitten towers and castles <br />With sham ghosts; <br />Mouldering quarries and mines; <br />And an impotent people, <br />Sick with inbreeding, <br />Worrying the carcase of an old song. To live in Wales is to be conscious <br />At dusk of the spilled blood <br />That went into the making of the wild sky, <br />Dyeing the immaculate rivers <br />In all their courses. <br />It is to be aware, <br />Above the noisy tractor <br />And hum of the machine <br />Of strife in the strung woods, <br />Vibrant with sped arrows. <br />You cannot live in the present, <br />At least not in Wales. <br />There is the language for instance, <br />The soft consonants <br />Strange to the ear. <br />There are cries in the dark at night <br />As owls answer the moon, <br />And thick ambush of shadows, <br />Hushed at the fields' corners. <br />There is no present in Wales, <br />And no future; <br />There is only the past, <br />Brittle with relics, <br />Wind-bitten towers and castles <br />With sham ghosts; <br />Mouldering quarries and mines; <br />And an impotent people, <br />Sick with inbreeding, <br />Worrying the carcase of an old song.<br /><br />Ronald Stuart Thomas<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/welsh-landscape/
