Poems by Daffni Percival

AUTUMN 1969

Elms are flared with yellow;

Oaks turn bronze;

Mist swirls along the furrow;

The year grows old.

And the beech trees stand

Root-deep in discarded gold.

I, squirrel-like secrete

About the hollows of my mind

Jewels

To hang upon the world

At other times

When all within

Is uniformly grey,

When poetry fades

And reason

Faces the light of day.

But words cannot retain

Such images;

Only their ghosts remain,

Reminding me how

Through the autumn mist

I prayed involuntary prayers

Of gratitude

To gods that did not exist.

THE GANDER

As a pale sun glimmers and water shimmers

Beneath a grey damp dawn

A gaggle of geese from over the lee

Come single file to the bourne.

In the deep dark pool where the water is cool

Dipping their breasts they wade;

Then they shake their quills and the water spills

On the grass in a silver cascade.

The first sun flings on their flying wings

A glancing golden stain

As the flock takes flight in the morning light,

Then wheels to home again.

All day, all day, in their vagrant way

The vagrant flock will roam,

Till the darkling air and the evening prayer

Of the song thrush are calling them home.

The gander surveys, by the last faint rays

Of the sun, the fading fields

and the foxy hill, and he’ll listen still

When soon to sleep he yields.

He holds the sky in the gleam of his eye,

To the last of the sun he calls.

An echo replies as the daylight dies

And night’s mantle falls.

When shadows creep and the grey geese sleep

Under the hawthorn hedge

He stands alone, an image of stone

At the whispering water’s edge.

From A Sheepdoggerel Anthology

The Dog’s Lament

The boss has gone; I’m a lonely dog;
I haven’t the spirit to prowl;
I look at my biscuits with jaundiced eye
And I sit by the door and howl.

I am the back-seat-driver,
I should be there in the van;
It’s me that keeps an eye on the road,
Not a damned computer plan.

The rain is dripping, the sheep are wet;
I can’t be bothered to bark;
I don’t give a damn what the ducks are doing;
My world has gone woefully dark.

Wispy, promiscuous bitch,
Is making eyes at the sitter;
But I am a serious collie dog
And I say it doesn’t befit her.

I know that we’ve been dumped
While the boss goes off on the spree.
It ain’t right; she loses all sorts of things,
But never drives off without me.

From A Sheepdoggerel Anthology

Sun On The Hill

“Daw haul ar fryn”

they say in Wales,

“Sun will come on a hill”.

So put on your wellies,

get out in the rain,

and let life’s weather

send what it will.

Though the landscape

is nought but storm-tossed sky

with never a sign of a hill,