A New Year Jaunt Part II: Mountains and Molehills

Stepping back out of St Ishow's Church into the churchyard, you are again swept up in the magnificence of the Grwyne Fawr valley.  It hasn't changed while you've been inside, it's just that you were so beguiled by the artifice of human beings, you forgot Nature's genius. 

Here's a reminder.

I loved this sheep with a black spot on its bum. 

The Churchyard was stuffed full of interesting gravestones.  I particularly liked this fallen angel with molehill ...

... and this spelling mistake, spotted by Dru.  

Oh, and this headstone also: A Man is born to dye

One thing that struck me was the number of plain yet beautifully lettered graves which resembled those in Mells in north-east Somerset.  It's almost as if the churchyards are twinned ... 

Robin Truelove, Partrishow                      Siegfried Sassoon, Mells

        gravestone, Mells                              gravestone, Partrishow

... or maybe both villages tend to attract well-heeled arty corpses.

After a good fossick around the churchyard, it was time to return to the well, the site (so the story has it) of St Ishow's martyrdom in (it is believed) the 6th or 7th century.  It's a peaceful spot nowadays.

Of course, springs were sacred long before the Christians came, as were yews.  I took a small chunk of wood from the yew stump up in the churchyard to lay with all the other votive offerings.

This is the well itself, with a pannikin hanging on one side and niches for offerings.    

Heading for Crickhowell, we stopped to see if we could capture a photo that replicated the vision of Dru's picture.  By scrambling over a barbed wire fence, Dru just about managed it.  Meanwhile, a pair of ravens chatted to each other over head.  Perfect.

Chapter and Verse

At the end of another Can Openers in Bristol Central Library, a group of poets sloped off to the tea room in the neighbouring Cathedral and supped in the sunny cemetery garden.  After a while, the conversation turned to Christianity and Richard Dawkins and so on.  I didn't join in much.  It seemed strange that some of them were atheists when, to me, poetry is a sacred thing, inherently bound up with the literal tying together that is religion.  I would struggle to make sense of love without allowing there might be more to life than we can hope to understand on this side of death? 

Every now and then people wandered off around the graves.  Summer flowers had been allowed to swamp them with colour and life.  One poet observed that the stone at the foot of one should be marked exit rather than entrance.  


The grave nearest the Chapter House was covered in wild strawberries and the fruit tasted sweet. 




As everyone left,  I popped into the Chapter House. It is one of my very favourite spaces in the world and if I'm fated to haunt anywhere, I hope it's here.  Sublime glass and sumptuous honey-coloured stone, quilted by Norman masons, and the whole infused with an atmosphere of warmth and love. Very different from the considerably more austere Cathedral.  

 Then home to my younger boy and my dog, who make this life worth living.

Billy Cans and Bats

I knew there were caves in Avon Gorge but other than St Vincent’s (or Giant’s) Cave, which every local’s been to, I’d never visited any, nor did I expect to, being far too old and substantial these days to want to squeeze myself into any more tight spots, literally or metaphorically.  Dru, however, claimed that access to Burwalls Cave was easy and offered to take me there.  I wasn’t so sure it was a good idea after reading her account of her visit – anyone who can nonchalantly hop over the parapet of the Clifton Suspension Bridge is a far braver soul than I – but she assured me there was an easier, albeit illegal, route over university property, so Thursday saw us nipping through a hole in the fence and scrambling down the well-trodden path to the cave, perched about a third of the way down the steep cliffs of the gorge, while buzzards soared overhead. 

And there we were, ensconced in what is probably the oldest domicile in the city and still in use today – in fact, the ashes of the fire were still smouldering.  It’s hard not to feel as if you are intruding in someone’s private space when you are confronted with their sleeping bag, books and billy can, but there’s also a guest book (marked 'guest book') and a palpable feeling that this is a place which belongs to everyone, underlined by the presence of shrines to Buddha, Krishna, and Jesus, prayer flags, dream-catchers, a shaman stick, a little Aztec-style carving, and everywhere hearts - chalked, painted, hanging from crevices, or wedged on ledges. 

Dru brewed some tea and we contemplated the view, something which the well-heeled denizens on the opposite side of the gorge pay a fortune to enjoy.  It  wasn’t long before the white noise of the traffic-clogged A4 a good two hundred feet below us became the roar of an ice-age torrent cutting through rock, and a feeling of peace descended.  

‘Keep the secret,’ urges the guest book.  I resolved to do so, and managed for all of three hours, when a friend at a loose end stopped by and I found myself heading back over the bridge.  And this time we were lucky enough to get up close and personal with one of the inhabitants.

Full Circle

Full Circle

In ancient China
the moon is made of figured silk,
woven with the pattern of galloping hares,
three conjoined by a single ear,
together whole.

An eternal circle
embroidered on bolts of cloth,
carried by camel through singing sands,
the booming dunes of wind-whipped
Xhiang Sha Wan,

where Silk Road
frays to quick oasis, and
wondering artists paint three hares
on sacred temple cavern walls.
The Buddha’s wheel

of life and death
rolls through Persia’s burning plains,
eclipses sere, salt-desert suns: a brazen tray
engraved with hares, a stamped,
Islamic copper coin.

Crossing rivers, bridging rifts
in hidden groves of moss and stone,
these three hares chased on Jewish tombs
and makeshift tabernacle roofs,
the blackened beams

of Dartmoor churches
at the edges of the earth, bear
a trinity of hares, three in one, the risen son,
beneath a moon that pins
the universal oceans.

Deborah Harvey © 2011



Hares by Dru Marland, words by me.

More trinities of hares here

My poetry collection, 'Communion', coming this spring from Indigo Dreams.