Peter Thabit Jones [Wales, UK]

 

Stones
 
Stones take to each other naturally,
Like a family of sleeping creatures,
 
The large ones accommodate little ones,
To create a colony of hardness;
 
They rest in centuries of stark stillness;
They are elephant-heavy to lush grass.
 
Their colours employ the afternoon sun;
They are as warm as loaves from an oven.
 
Each one embodies its personal death;
They are cobbled memories of the sea;
 
They are the solid language of labour:
Each one weathered to a perfect image.
 
They rest, innocent of their history,
Like a grey display of featureless skulls.
 
They have tasted our sweat and absorbed our blood.
They rise and fall, symbols of man’s conscience.
 
Their persistence has sculptured their silence;
They hint that their souls haunt other planets.
 
They are magnets for our primitive thoughts;
They are the armour of truths beyond us.
 
They shape our built fears of an afterlife,
They could tempt us into acts of worship.
                                          (2026)
 
 
 
Garden of Clouds
 
         (For Hilary)
 
Ivy has taken over our lives:
A new house and an overworld of green;
Clinging – like thick, grubby, bare-skinned cobwebs –
To old pipes, walls and the “rag-and-bone shop”
Of someone else’s dead life. It seems sly;
Entangling itself throughout the rotten,
Wooden skeleton of a large glasshouse;
It covers an old mangle heavily –
Like a bamboo-woven mat. The dead, brown
Tentacles are brittle as baby bones:
They biscuit-snap. Above, white flowers snow
And a dirty shower of big, green moths.
The limbs of disorder? Or nature
Left to ooze its joy? It grasps the high walls
Like provocative art: a seaman’s rope
Snaking on the dry surface of cement.
It has branches as thick as a man’s wrist;
I hack, with an axe, into this jungle
Of garden shame; I saw its brown tendrils,
Revealing a gaping, tattered whiteness.
I am its sweating slave; its dust peppers
My salted face. My slicing and tugging
Releases the ruined, rusty riches:
Captured under its green revolution.
But someone else must have loved it; needed
This waterless aquarium of weeds.
And I think of lonely Edward Thomas,
Liking tall nettles but disliking man.
It hangs, unruly, above my smallness:
Like frayed, green curtains and arthritic sticks.
The rough invasion is now retreating.
Now the garden is free of oppression
(Though I feel no pride in my ruthlessness);
Just a bunch of green moths clutch a bald wall.
Stretching up, I pick off the bold parasites;
For they say it comes back with a vengeance.
 
                                           (2026)
 
 
Ballad of Garcia Lorca
                   
Dark Federico, a caged bird sings in your songs.          
Poet of the moon, you know death comes,          
You know the cold panther that will eat the dove’s wings;          
The shadows are gathering their crimes.
        
Don’t trust the graveyard silence of the midnight trees,          
Their leaves are the dawn’s emerald tongues.          
Don’t trust the drunk memories brimmed in friendship’s eyes,          
Love is always prey to hatred’s fangs.
          
Dark Federico, merchant of ballads and love,          
The fascist bullies are selling fear.          
Like the spoilt thugs of a terrible god, they thrive;          
Their brutality spreads like fire.
                 
The widows are weeping for men dragged from their streets;        
And children hug sad ghosts in their sleep.        
The butchers of peace have torn innocence to bits;        
And stripped hope cowers before the whip.
                 
Dark Federico, the assassins come with nails        
To crucify the black voice of Spain.        
Don’t trust the flowers’ scent, don’t trust the smiling pools;        
The hour is tense, like a loaded gun.
        
Blood brother of the poor and the misunderstood,        
You know the hopelessness of the stars;        
And you know the borders of the lover gone mad.        
The truth waits near The Fountain of Tears.
                 
Dark Federico, the horses threaten the night,        
Their hooves trample any thoughts of dawn.        
Yesterday is tightened and is pulled like a knot        
And tomorrow is a victim’s frown.
        
A guitar has been broken, a tambourine slashed;                     
A mirror’s fragments arrest the moon.                     
Actor of man’s loneliness, your stage has been crushed                     
Fear is between the fox and its den.                                   
           
Dark Federico, gypsy poet, shadows come                     
To stain the moon and the nervous stars.  
They have hung your green songs on the roadways of shame.                     
Your death waits near The Fountain of Tears.
                 
(Note: In August 1936 during the Spanish Civil War, the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca was murdered in his native Granada by General Franco’s fascist squad. He was thirty eight years-old. It is believed his execution took place near the Fuente Grande. ‘Big Fountain’, a well-known spring; the Arabs called it Ainadamar, ‘The Fountain of Tears’.)
        
                                                    (2026)

 
 
Author’s Bionote: 

*Peter Thabit Jones was born in Swansea, Wales, in 1951. He has authored eighteen books, including the “Dylan Thomas Walking Tour of Greenwich Village New York” with Aeronwy Thomas. He and Aeronwy Thomas did a poetry reading tour across America in 2008. An annual writer-in-residence in Big Sur, California, he has received a number of awards, including the Eric Gregory Award for Poetry (The Society of Authors, UK), the 2017 Homer: European Medal for Art and Poetry, and the 2025 International Best Poet of the Year by International Poetry Translation and Research Centre/The Journal of “Rendition of International Poetry” (Multilingual)/The Board of Directors of “World Union of Poetry Magazines”. His poem ‘Kilvey Hill’ is incorporated into a stained-glass window in Saint Thomas School, Swansea, Wales.  Further information:  www.peterthabitjones.com