O Soil

from the Welsh of Waldo Williams

So long, O Soil, you’ve over-
whelmed my sight. The long end

has come; your red flowers are
pox, your yellow flowers pus.

I won’t, can’t, walk. There’s no out
there. Your fever stole

into my blood; I saw the dirty
jaws open and say, Ho! brother,

my brother in the pit of blood,
sucking the squeal through

the nape, my brother poised
on footless limbs, the poison-

belly of the spider’s mesh.
And who is this kills their birds

in the deep hedge, throws
to the dirt a year’s plumes,

to mock them with a dazzling
shroud? – our mother,

who shoves us in our backs,
sneers through the pane,

shouting Ho, tribe! Necessity!
crowing over the wreck.

*
O Soil, towards the South Pole
is an island where you are

not: one vast floor of blue
ice, and no foot or cry to break

its perfect chill waste. Only
the stormwinds drone. No bird

knows passage through
the empty air, where

night lights the mist
and mist darkens night –

lovelier than my childhood
sun on the fenceless moor,

though the masterless winds
whip the sinewless ice

and the breathless hail
hammers no evil, no good.

Beyond Kerguelen is the island
where no soul has stood –

a nameless, storyless place.
And waiting there is God.