ELDRITCH RUINS

Over the mountain pass,

 atop the cantilevered heights,

wild ponies and tiny sheep

roam the grassy beacons

wherever the bracken allows -

on these tilted, well-grazed spaces

without a boundary in slight -

just the shadowy groove below

where the Wye sculpts its Ice Age way 

from the massif of Pumlumon. 

En route for Capel y Ffin,

over a ridge the ancient Dyke runs;

the watershed Vale of Ewas

rises here.

Our little road snakes its way alongside the steep cleft

“not a bows-shot in width”

with towering cliffs on either side;

The banks are sheer, rare for sun to reach

 with dizzy drops below. 

Down and down we go,

 crawly on the lip of inbetween with occasional stone bridges:

vestiges of sheep pens, gateways, a track or mound;

huge Ash trees uprooted,

something hidden, primordial,

where early and medieval man once trod.

It’s a jolt from this otherworldly place,

to come upon a building, a car

• some sign of habitation.

The great arches of Llanthony

frame the horizons far above,

jerking the mind out of torpor;

there’s even a red Phone-box, a farm b&b sign 

and a singing silence in the bones

long before any monks or Normans settled there.

Llanthony Priory

Black Mountains.