A Bittersweet Herbal

On your left is the nest
of a secret drinker: a collection of glass
like a box of jewels.
Tourmaline, garnet shine
through the scrub. No matter

how often the obsessive litter 
picker plunders the bower, overnight
bottles – perfect as eggs – and fragrant
with malt reappear, so resilient
is pain and the instinct 

to hide it. We could set watch, 
to observe this creature 
and approach. But no. Anguish 
deserves its privacy. 
 

Listen to the poem read out by Gwyneth

What woke me was not a kiss 
but an injection. Bewitched
by my brain waves, I fell ill 
in a genteel herbaceous border,
which is now a thicket of thorns.  

How will I ever find 
my old life? 
Give up. Learn to cultivate 
shade, rejoice in mosses.

Listen to the poem read out by Gwyneth

Fe’m lladdwyd, fel gwair 
yr ail gynhaeaf, a’m gosod i orffwys 
ar fy ngwely, tra fo peiriant salwch 
yn rhuo llofruddiaeth 

dau gae i ffwrdd. Mae’r ysbryd
gorweddol yn hanner effro
i siffrwd creaduriaid y meddwl.
Mae’r boda a’r brain

uwchben yn barod. Chi nerfau’r 
dychymyg, rhof fy nghorff 
rhyngoch chi a’r rhai rheibus ond rhedwch
tra medrwch, da chi, am loches

y cloddiau – na, nid fi, ond y gerdd! –
mae’n amser: daw’r barcud i hela,
a chyn hir, fe ddychwel y baler 
i ddechrau o ddifri ar y cywain.
 

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The Tired plant
won’t grow for those
without patience. I have

what it takes, bow down
with the weight 
of blossoms so luscious

they deserve to be
laid, not dropped, 
on the baize-

green lawn, with the 
croupier’s care, who 
never despairs,

no matter the odds:
‘Ladies and gents, please 
place your bets’.

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B James
Bryn Villa
December 1928

I’m learning the grasses with my Dacu,
who died in nineteen sixty-seven. First page, 
he’s keen: Sweet Vernal Grass puts the sugars 
in hay. Sheep’s Fescue he ticks, learning the humble

but missing the swelling fashion crescendo
through Pinks, Poppies, Spurges, 
not noting – as I do now – that an Orchid’s     
two tubers in Welsh are called ‘Adam and Eve’.
 
Eve sinks in water but, hey, Adam floats…
The Nettle’s a ‘weapon’. Horse-tail, full of silica, 
is Brwyn Nadd, (Whetting Rushes), 
used to sharpen arrows. Nineteen twenty eight, a decade 

after the battle of Ypres, where Dacu was wounded. 
No wonder he leaves me when humble Bracken’s 
rhizomes are described ‘like soldiers in dugouts’. So I go on 
alone to Lichen, Toadstools and the difficult Mosses. 

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A rare plant
has flowered
after fifteen years.
I thought I was dead 
or, at least, infertile but look!
I’m blossoming tears

in a fountain of fuschia 
blooms, known in Irish 
as deora dé, God’s tears. While I cry, I
am him. So, come closer

and drink while you may, before
they turn brittle again and shatter 
like glass, scattered around to protect me.

Listen to the poem read out by Gwyneth

Dim ond mewn cwm â’i gwmwl ei hun
y mae’r llysieuyn yn tyfu
a all wella twymyn teimlo’n ddryslyd.

Mae’n foddion mor brin 
nes bod rhaid ei warchod 
gan filwyr
a hyfforddwyd i feddwl 
yn glir. Liw nos, fe welwch
goelcerth y gwylwyr 
yn ymladd eu penbleth.

Yn y glaw, mae persawr planhigyn y niwl yn trechu’r
gorau, ac fe’u clywir yn wylo
dros gwymp dinasoedd yr ewyllys.

Listen to the poem read out by Gwyneth

I’m so secret that I’m one of the thirty-six
vegetal lamedvivnikim, a justified
plant that holds up the world from a dank

menstrual mangrove. Where is the moth
with the exact-shaped proboscis to probe me?
bring me to ecstasy, so that I arch

my back, lift my flower’s white taffeta skirt
to breed? It’s not you, with your porn-
angled lenses, but that twitch in the bark which is

a Giant Sphinx Moth with intent.

Listen to the poem read out by Gwyneth

Dydw i ddim, hyd yn oed, yn coelio fy hun.
Dim rhyfedd na fedra i dderbyn gair
neb arall. Rwy mewn rhyw strach o hyd.

Ddoe: rhoi’r gore i farddoni
Bore ‘ma, wedyn, dyma fi
yn clywed rhywbeth, gorfod sgwennu:

gosod geiriau, fel dillad gwlyb
ar lein y frawddeg, er mwyn eu gwylio’n
chwifio’n y gwynt wrth iddyn nhw sychu.

Listen to the poem read out by Gwyneth

The ewe has unbuttoned her woollen coat
along her sternum to display the scarlet

lining. Her organs are pinned inside,
hot watches. Magpies have seized her eyes

to try out her gaze. It’s a social occasion: kites,
buzzards and their crow companions – anatomy students all –

descend, to attend, in raked seating, Dr Tulp’s
dissection at the Guild of Surgeons, raucous but taking in

every detail and especially craving fat globules
like amber beads concealed on her person.

Listen to the poem read out by Gwyneth

Fe fwres i ‘mhen. Goeliech chi byth
faint o waed ddaw o’r talcen: disgynnodd
yn rhwyd, fel llen het goctél, a gorlifo
dros wefus cwpan fy llaw. Rhedais allan

i’r stryd, fel un mewn gorymdaith, yn tasgu
rhubannau ysgarlad i ddathlu ‘mod i’n ffynnon
gyhoeddus o haemoglobin -  pistyll y llan! -

mam y briodferch yn ei fascinator,
plu carmin yn crynu - to uwch fy mhen
cyn ffurfio utgorn ysgarlad, corn gwlad

Amaryllis yn cyhoeddi ‘mod i’n dechrau blino,
felly dewch a’ch piser cyn i’r clwyf geulo…

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Nobody picks the late-autumn glut
Inside the graveyard’s kissing gate.

I missed the first sweetness that sheen
of plump lushness, drawing in obliging birds

And the second, each fruit a cluster of dormouse eyes –
the mighty dormouse, whose merest presence

can avert major roads in the planning! Being ill
tastes bitter. Third ripening now and I feel

for fruit not yet sucked dry by moths, false wasps,
not pregnant with maggots – my haul,

dear for being so soon to be gone, imperfect
but here, despite thorns that draw

long, blood-beaded scratches on legs, like autumn’s needle
tattooing haws on the hedge, a self-portrait.

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The herb called Will I Ever Feel
Better? Is to be used
only to treat the gravest wounds

that must – despite the patient’s protests – 
be kept open, so they can heal
from the inside out. Summer comes, summer

goes. So little recovery. Being alive
is both trauma and sovereign
remedy. You cannot choose.

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I am that untimely tree, out of sync
with seasons, seeking the beat –
called the One – for healing. I’m always too soon

or right after. Just off. I’m still part
(however peripheral) of the band, me
with my triangle, waiting and counting

through the cacophony, we’re all playing badly
two, one and I’m in! and we end altogether,
look round in surprise and burst out laughing.

Listen to the poem read out by Gwyneth