Cwm Idwal
The name, Devil’s Kitchen, now gives no pause
To Snowdonian pilgrims at Cwm Idwal, for whom
A glacier monster more explicably roars:
Kicking from his ooze-bed at the long-cradling coomb,
Baby strews crumbs, left labours of Sisyphus,
Headboard heart-shaped in a syncline igneous -
And this is the tumult sin’s inclined to cause?
Fallen into ice from his high estate,
Old Scratch¹ left his Kitchen a geological shrine,
For bold-faced truth has so forceful a gait
As no sooner seen than loved, anodyne.
Now clamping infinity ‘twixt big bang paws,
Biting off deep mysteries with animal jaws,
Man’s best friend masticates, minds to eviscerate.
I drowsed. In a cold sweat, I stir - to a silence
Towering all round me, unshakeable. I trawl
Reverie for this meaning: concomitance of circumstance
And observer may engage the heart and all
That we value, so that thought and dream will combine,
The language of heart and head will entwine -
And heartless we rate as poorly as dunce.
No less kind to soul than wit
(Luring by beauty and geological chart)
Is the wholesome influence that rules this pit,
For the heart can learn the intellect’s part