The driver’s seat was empty, the man left somewhere in the hands of forgetfulness. I must live as long as parrots do, moult like them, and dayschool, those trips to farms when White twilight approaches but,Īs woman, I must live as long as parrots do, moult like them and change my feathers. I aped the library that my vowels knew, the grandmother that my words had heard of:īethel, gwreiddiau, madre, corazon. With my ten toes finding footholds, my ten fingers and thumbs heaving their guilty load. I travel, a woman, on from the border of one country to yet another Later the removal van down the hill: my father’s blue hand of forgetfulness.
Of farms muscled their way to lambs, tense milk, gums barking behind every locked door. Let’s begin with England and dayschool, those trips when woollen hides Who saw, on leaning over the mine gate, the shaft fall as slate and decapitate It began in the pursed garden of watchful lips. It began in the closed one of silence or let’s say In union here is my mother, here my grandfather, his ears trained for the horn’s blast,įor restlessness, for journeys. Here is the house of the jaguar drum, its people suffering every blow To summer tempests when the sky is a humid tortoise shell, a taut down-turned bowl. When the earth is a snail withdrawn deep in labyrinthine shell-I travel onwards Now, a woman, I carry sterile ghosts heavy on my back to winter solstice To a gramophone whispering secrets we won’t want you here, we don’t want you here At the house, three albino twins sat with ears Somewhere in the field, a man was hunting, his pupils I set out on my journey, a woman, until turning from the dark car window, She says, I’m right here in front of you. Writing about web page Ten Fingers, Ten Thumbs: an Experiment with Markov Output Being silent is not necessarily passive, but can be a performative act – a way of discovering selfhood, of discovering empathy, of making comparisons. Like Elfyn, I have stepped towards another culture, another way of life to explore the silence of oppressed or minority cultures. Elfyn humanises this inhabitant of the 'axis of evil' by allowing him to be a visible subject and by admitting his privileged knowledge of Welsh, another minority culture and language. Thus in Menna Elfyn's poem, 'Broadway Morning', the protagonist hears a ' "bore da" of welcome / from the mouth of an Iraqi'. Marginal poets are sometimes embedded in the culture, mythologies, landscapes of their own cultures or countries, but this does not have to be the case.
Calvino describes the people who ' with their spyglasses and telescopes aimed downward never tire of examining it, tirelessly observing it, leaf by leaf, stone by stone, ant by ant, contemplating with fascination their own absence'. The example of the city of Baucis in Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities is useful here the residents of Baucis marginalise themselves allowing no part of the city to touch the earth's surface. As Kristeva states, 'How can one avoid sinking into the mire of common sense, if not by becoming a stranger to one's own country, language, sex, and identity?' In The Secret, I have tried to explore my feelings about my own country through my estrangement. For marginal writers, new nefarious strategies dictate a kind of exile (in my case an exile from Welsh culture). The ironist who 'welcomes the foreigner without tying him down, opening the host to his visitor without committing him' is my ideal of the poet. Although, initial poems act as a mirror and shine a light on the exigencies of my own culture, my own country that is Wales, I remember Julia Kristeva's description of her ironist in Strangers to Ourselves. It is also a journey in marginal poetics. This collection emerges from silence and the secrets that such quietude entails.
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