Five years ago it felt like the world had momentarily stopped spinning. The nightly Covid bulletins aside, everything seemed preternaturally silent. Planes stayed on the ground. Traffic halted. And without the usual din of everday life (and later the weekly clap for carers) we began to notice sounds that had always been there but were drowned out by human activity.
I don’t miss the pandemic. But I do miss properly listening to nature. So it gave me great pleasure to dig out this symphony of sounds I recorded in my back garden during lockdown.
Federico García Lorca was one of Spain’s finest poets. Assassinated by Fascists in August 1936 soon after the start of the Spanish Civil War his death should remind us of the dangers of fascism as it rises once again, not just in Spain where I’m writing this but across the world.
Lorca’s resting place has never been found. But the graves of many who lost their lives under Franco have been and their remains returned to their families. I was struck that among the possessions retrieved from the most recently found bodies was a pencil. So I used that as my starting point for this work of imagination. What last words would Lorca’s pencil have written in the hours – at most days – between his detention and his death?
Lorca’s Pencil
Vete a la mierda, Lorca Fuck you Lorca Fuck your words Fuck your poesia And fuck your queer ways
The pencil cracked more softly than the bullet though hurt me more. The broken end thrust thus in my poet’s eye.
Yet stabbed and shot To die I worry not As I had not worried to be born. This unmarked grave like my fly-leaved crib Hojas en blanco continuará Blank sheets to be filled. Poetry cannot be stilled. This pencil unearthed will pick up its path:
In Spain the dead are more alive than the dead of any other country. And I am more alive than ever My words illuminate the darkness. My pencil points the way.
Lee mis palabras Read my words Remember my words Recite my words But never reject them
My unconcealed weapon is truly mightier than the sword (it’s what scared them so and put me here) Behold this arch-enchanter’s wand Itself a nothing (to borrow Bulwer-Lytton) But taking sorcery from my master hand (as he has written) To paralyse my seizers. And to strike them breathless Take away the sword Freedom can be saved without it!
El futuro es tuyo para escribirlo The future is yours to write, so Escribelo bien Write it well.
Midnight strikes on the memorial clock A flame throwing dragon is guarding the flock While a gunpowder fog glistens and glosses The uniform slates and the uniform mosses.
For God and for Country. Lest we forget.
A window on North Street turned aquarium green Where a Six Nations turf war bled out on the screen And all the beers downed are now suds on the glass As a solider called Taffy’s kicked out on his arse.
The Castle Hotel on a Saturday night. Over the top lads. One hell of a fight. Jones is shot through, guts spilled at ten paces One hundred years from the pals without faces.
Retching and heaving by the stone-carved platoon Blood at the feet of the boys gone too soon.
For God and for Country. Lest we forget.
Nisha, meanwhile, she will not remember This hen night scene from sometime in… November? And is missing in action out in no man’s land Too many Jägerbombs, four in each hand.
At the sound of a whistle, she went over the top And is now taking cover in Lloyd Morgan’s shop Pinned down on East Street by the rat a tat tat Of a security shutter and the hiss of a cat.
And sniping from windows and ricochet words The bayonet beaks of the flesh-eating birds A battle dress ribbon, a medal for valour An ecstasy of fumbling*, no masks boys it’s Calor.
For God and for Country. Lest we forget.
By dawn the guns are silent And a smoke of red kites rises above the carrion As an Ivor Williams trailer bleats past Welsh lambs for the slaughter.
These lines were written laying in bed next to an Evans in my hotel room after watching the poet, Atilla the Stockbroker, perform in Rhayader’s wonderful Lost Arc arts venue.
*The expression “an ecastasy of fumbling” is lifted directly from the war poet Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est. I thank him, Atilla and my constant muse, Dylan Thomas, for the inspiration and my poetry teacher, Pele Cox, for her gentle and expert encouragement.
The memorial clock tower Rhayader from my bedroom above Ty Morgan’s cafe. It was erected by subscription in 1924 for the men of the area who lost their lives in the Great War. The names of those who died in WW2 were added later. The Castle Hotel’s “aquarium” disco is round the corner in North Street. The Calor gas sign close to where Nisha took shelter is just to the right in East Street.
