Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur.—Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
’Mid groves and copses. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!
With some uncertain notice, as might seem
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some Hermit’s cave, where by his fire
The Hermit sits alone.

                                        These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and ’mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind
With tranquil restoration:—feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man’s life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened:—that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,—
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.

                                                    If this
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft—
In darkness and amid the many shapes
Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart—
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,
O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro’ the woods,
      How often has my spirit turned to thee!

  And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope,
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
I came among these hills; when like a roe
I bounded o’er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led: more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days
And their glad animal movements all gone by)
To me was all in all.—I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, not any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.—That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompense. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue.—And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.

                                         Nor perchance,
If I were not thus taught, should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; ’tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary ******* of daily life,
Shall e’er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty mountain-winds be free
To blow against thee: and, in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance—
If I should be where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence—wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together; and that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came
Unwearied in that service: rather say
With warmer love—oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!

At Tintern Abbey I set my bait
To fish in the River Wye,
I’d only been an hour, I swear
When the girl came floating by,
Her dress spread out, a fine brocade
And some lace about her hair,
I almost drowned when I reeled her in
And fell in the river there.

I pulled her up on the river bank
And she lay, and softly sighed,
I felt a strange relief, and thanked
The Lord, I thought she’d died.
But her eyelids gave a flutter then
And she looked at me apace,
‘Would you be one of the Abbot’s men?
There’s no mark upon your face.’

‘I only came to fish,’ I said,
‘And I like what I have caught.’
The look she gave me made me blush
For it set my jest at naught.
‘The Abbot Gilbert lies within
By his candle, book and prayer,
The pestilence has found his sin
For he knows, he’s dying there.’

I thought her speech was quaint and old
Like an echo, lost in time,
I thought, ‘I’ve never seen one so fair,
If only she was mine!’
But she sat, and moved away from me
And she said, ‘You mustn’t touch,
For death has stained this fine country,
It may have you in its clutch.’

‘But I only came to fish,’ I said,
And, ‘there’s nothing wrong with me;
Yet you float down the River Wye
And will end up in the sea.’
‘I chose the cleansing waters so
To avoid the pestilence,
The dead lie in the fields about
And it spares no eminence.’

‘My husband, Guy Fitzherbert bleeds
In the Abbey’s ante-room,
His pilgrimage denied his needs
And the Lord will take him soon.’
I stared at Tintern Abbey’s shell
Standing gaunt against the sky,
‘You must be catching a fever,
We must go and get you dry.’

‘I needs must be on my way again,
Good sir, I wish you well,
But leave this place if you’d rather live
Than enter the gates of Hell.’
My mind caught at some thing she said
And a thought, then so sublime,
I asked the girl, ‘What year is this…?’
‘Thirteen forty-nine!’

David Lewis Paget

The Danube to the Severn gave
  The darken'd heart that beat no more;
  They laid him by the pleasant shore,
And in the hearing of the wave.

There twice a day the Severn fills;
  That salt sea-water passes by,
  And hushes half the babbling Wye,
And makes a silence in the hills.

The Wye is hush'd nor moved along,
  And hush'd my deepest grief of all,
  When fill'd with tears that cannot fall,
I brim with sorrow drowning song.

The tide flows down, the wave again
  Is vocal in its wooded walls;
  My deeper anguish also falls,
And I can speak a little then.

Breathless in this valley
I contemplate with awe
the timeless,verdant landscape
rolling upward from it's floor.
I wonder at such symmetry
such sublime majesty
which captures my attention
and makes my spirit soar.
The river in it's urgent quest
to reach the open sea
with it's salmon forging upward
in their own urgency.
Nothing greener than the meadows
watered by the rushing Wye
except perhaps the wooded hills
standing green against the sky.

Under Rings And Crescent
Meandering Down Stream
Through The Land Of My
Fathers
That Once Carried Their
Dreams
To The Wider Reaches Of
Silty Gravel Plains
That Are Fed And Washed
By Cambrian Rains
Here High Vertical Sandbanks
Crisis Cross The Valley Floors
Allowing The Wye To Empty
Onto English Shores

One Of The Most Scenic Rivers In The UK

we break into the graveyard after hours. no purpose, but it's just there, down the road. and it's nice the way it overlooks the ocean.
   climbing over the hedges, we see a middle-aged couple already there, blasting dixieland on a portable radio. we share a confused look, and just leave again, a tad indignantly. it's the kinda thing that's ruined if someone else's doing it.

                                                  summer drags on,


the sound of trucks. bubbled wallpaper in pavement creaks.
wonder with the directed slice of soft fallen pillow lumps.

we
          round the way to the two parks, one with the children mewling on the wooden
stumps and the other with the cigarette butts, sports grounds, snubbed out sunday radio. the wind make a steady jaunt down the long
forgotten corridors. there's little to see here, but it's an easy place to make home. the trees sway something rotten that would make a newcomer uncomfortable, but you learn to shut it out.

we're
standing in the road, hands in pockets, against the chill. no one's sure what to say. not sure if saying anything really helps the fact. it just embroids the situation with complexity, detracting from an otherwise pure, if unpleasant, tone. we settle for a 'see you around.' the claim, if it is a claim, is false. the movers come early the next morning. and the house down the way stands vacant. the boards rot away. a year later the building is knocked down. rebuilt. craftsmen and diggers. but the same lot. same dirt. chewed up and digested. every winter the worms die. are replaced. tendrils expanding and contracting. sit down. it becomes so wearisome, but sometimes the sun's mild presence  makes it okay. the boards buckle in the damp morning light. the
  water filtration system hums down the road. the neighbour's kid crosses the road to the other park. kicks a soccer-ball for a few hours, gets dejected, and returns home, is reswallowed by the painted timber.  


the bible pushers did the usual rounds on wednesday. Mrs. Grensten would always let them in for tea. we'd watch from the other window, and imagine infidelities, convoluted fetish play that they'd get up to. a game of enticing disgust. eyes on the window in the hope they'd slip up, and we'd see a shot of tired flesh among the drawn curtains. a vacant voyeurism. laugh in the boredom of a dreary sin.
       they haven't visited for some years. after Mrs Grensten died, the next time they came Mr Grensten chased them away with his walking stick among coarse shouts and tears. the downstairs windows and now left open, but there's nothing inside


your pen-pal in Romania sent a postcard. they didn't write anything, but there was an old chapel in a field on it


some days the sea is quiet. generally in the early morning, during lowtide. under the moon the sand takes on this expansive pale blue luminescence  
        usually it's either too crowded, or the waves make up for the lull in people. i thought i had a point here, but i didn't


  she stands in cotton robes, stained and dyed with gin. mother says to ignore her. she rings a small ornamental bell. you don't really get it. you ask why she's ringing it. with a finger to the mouth she shushes you. you look offended. as you 're about to persist in demanding explanation, she steps out into the road, just as a courier van speeds round the corner. she wears a soft smile. the tiremarks on the cotton makes a pattern that reminds you of something, but you're not really sure what.


a humming light on an old oak table. there's a peacefulness here. you loose tempo, and the crowding figures look at you with irritation. you feel small and wish to melt, to become liquid and drain away, move in motions already dictated, they ask the next question. Who are you? Why? Justify your reasoning.
       a half ****** caramel drop. sticky.
       pavement grit. coarse.
   they
                closed the walkway due to wasp nests.
you're not sure which route to take. you pass
     by the graveyard instead, and look out to sea. there's a gentleness here. it reminds you of something, but you're not sure what


   we used to find bugs at the pond edge. the area had a piercing smell, but that was part of the charm. it meant we'd never dare enter the water, though. one day in teenage bravado, we did. it was slimy in texture. suddenly, you pushed my head down among the green folds. there was something there. a soft, but solid texture, like jelly. electric scatterings. old tire tracks folding out, like a deconstructed rubiks cube. i shoved your head in as well. we laughed and splashed in viscera.  wye's spoke in empty folds and promised us the world in reassuring tones. the warmth of a log fire on a winter eve, crackling sparks glowing in undulation. the muffled tones of a showerhead, blanketed in feathers. a mellow smile of the certainty of an inviting future. we lay on our backs and the sun shone down through the trees. as it passed the yardarm we headed back to shore, lost rapture of the soft kisses of meadow-banks. you grabbed a rock and bashed me in the head. a solid but glancing blow. this too, was fine. no fear, just laughter. i grabbed one too. with blunt instruments, we chiselled skin and bone. small enfolds of the rising moon. we stretched out, fingers entwined. no fear. possibly regret? but a soft regret, the kind that tracks the passing of time, that lets you register the ceaseless withering of the past, and hopefully, see beyond. rivulets of blood. i breathe in your gaze, and melt into grass. just laughter.


the stitches in the corner of your mouth are rotten. that's good, that means the healing is done. flesh reunited with flesh. you feel it with your finger. there's a bumpiness, but little sign of much else

Inflation is just another form of taxation
on the poor.
Was it Keynes who coined that phrase
back in those Bloomsbury days?
when the world was younger than now
when the when and the why and the who and the how
didn't matter
but now
it's appropriate
because of the awful state
we find ourselves in.
Was it him
Was it Keynes?
It seems that he was right
and if so,
then we must fight against poverty
fight against penury
we
could find insolvency
in our own back yard
Life is hard and they make it harder
raiding the larder
taking the food from your mouth.
The South
bleeds us dry
from the Tyne
to the Wye.
We really ought to get wise
and get rid of those guys
in grey suits.

Only yesterday when the headlines told me we're okay,
we're on the mend,there's improvement on the way
Only yesterday and I paid to read it,paid to read that crock of..
.. in a bit I'll get over it,get over all the barefaced lies
that I read in the daily, which I now despise and
I shall not buy that rag again.
At times the news is,to say the least,less the news,more of a feast
of fairy tales.
i.e
Mother Hubbard had no home,had no cupboard and therefore did not give her dog a bone but they say she did.
Well,
she got rid of that old Mutt and now lives in a garden hut,but the papers never tell you,do they?
Make hay says the Times,
which Hay? say I
Will hay? he's dead
Hay On Wye?
but that's in Wales and holds another crock of fairy tales.
Mary never had a lamb or if she did she ate it one day,when in a jam and had no food to give the brood back home
which by the way was by a field of hay and the home where Mother Hubbard once gave a dog a bone
and that was only yesterday.
I'l go online today
it's far less confusing.

What if I’d never been called Martin?

If I’d been called Malcom or Syed or Fred?

Would I have been treated any differently, would the thoughts be different in my head?

Would I have been adopted by a different couple, maybe by ones who really loved me instead?

Would I be living in a bungalow in Barnet or a thatched cottage in Hay upon Wye?

Be a scientist obsessed by nuclear fusion or a pilot spending hours in the sky.

Would I be a murderous tyrant, leaving fear, dread and bloodshed in my wake or a devotee of the divine Mary Berry, perfecting the ultimate bake?  

Would stories be written about me or songs sung about me by the fire or would journalists interview my loved ones and dear ones, desperate to expose me as a liar.

What if I’d been created a monster, not even given a name at all?

Just left where my life had started. Curled up and quivering in a ball.

No one to tell me they loved me, no one to give me a hug. Just treat like a thing to recoil from, like an odious, hideous bug.

But what if someone noticed me, to whom the outside didn’t matter at all.

Who looked at the deepest core of my being and saw secrets and delights to enthral.

Who coached and nurtured and loved me and treat me with no fear or no shame and decided to call me Isaac, as
that
would
be
my
perfect
name.

I got involved in a fight at Cradley Heath
Resulted in losing my two front teeth
Then another fight and a loss of my left eye
Got into a argument on the high street at Ross - on-Wye

A bus accident followed and I lost both feet
I was running for a bus at Birmingham New Street
After this it was the time I lost my hair
It happened in Scotland I think it was in Ayr

My next body part to lose was my dear old *****
Caused by a jealous Welsh husband at Caerphilly
I was talking too much in the town of Louth
Yep you've guessed it I lost my lips and mouth

Please don't pity me I still have my heart and brain
Actually that's a lie as today I got hit by a train

Who could ask for more?
than to sit beside the river
on it's perpetual,headlong journey,
in the green and verdant valley of the Wye.
Where the ever changing seasons
in their rich and timeless harmony
bring a new delight to please the eye.
Where meadows,rich and fertile,
reach up to meet the woodland
standing proud and green against the sky.
See the salmon catch the sunlight,
hear the constant conversations
of the bird life as they swoop and soar so high.
Smell the sweet scent of the leaf mould
catch the spirit of the moment
who could ask for more?
Not I.

Slick, it slithers, slyly slitting a slender
wrist (wrenching and writhing) and constantly controlling a
newcomer, now not neglecting noting,
he helplessly harms here and
there, though thoughtlessly thorough
anytime, anywhere (like an animal)
deeply depressing, downsizing, destroying,
working our wared-out worries, wondering wye flays flesh, frequently forgetting

that we care.

too much chatter to think

on the books i read.



remember the mix and match

of a scattered life.



i too remember wonderland.



not all is as it seems in hay

on wye.



he lost his wife.

earth and heaven.

Growing up avoiding eye contact getting mad dogged in the process. As I get older it's hard to make wye contact because I catch myself doing the same. Emotional eyes filled with personality.
Against so many odds trying to break the family curse. Be the one who made it. Never been about knocking others. Trying to bring them up with me. Sometimes I need to do this alone. ***** I'm a private person like if the world is out to get me. Always going to be me not be place in there's boxes. I aged out too old for all these made up rules that limit my motions.
Spoke up now everyone is mad. No one feels bad for you.