Declarations

We talk of birds
how pigeons know their way
from place to place like arrows to the heart

how we must file our declarations
o so carefully should some hand mistake
the weightlessness of love for goods

and place upon the heart a border

© Julian Brasington, 2025

When I met God on Lafan Sands

His house become houses 
become flats 
become Brookes Tarpaulin
boarded and meshed in steel

I came across God homeless
his back to the wind
counting the blows it took 
to puff the feathers from a wigeon
angels frothing up the sea

and as I hurried by
armed with a half-smile and a no thanks
I swear I heard him mumble
I never wanted any of this

Revised version of a poem originally published in Channel, Issue 3, 2020

When one has lived a long time

(After Galway Kinnell)

When one has lived a long time alone
and not alone your time become
someone’s history and you have grown
tired of yet another war and the world
has it in for you simply for being
wrong nation wrong colour wrong
construct in all its fairy-tale fictions
you begin the long slow weaning from lives
someone makes it their business to spoon
24/7 into your small ever so human head
and dream of an island fish sea-wind
and a life lived companied by no more folk
as can live a long time alone
and not alone on a handful of salty acres

Published in Ink Sweat & Tears, 2024.

Rewriting the Triads of the Island of Britain

After the medieval Trioedd Ynys Prydein

April, end of, blue sky, a chill in the air
one of the Fortunate Men of the Island of Prydein
sitting in a garden overlooking the sea
listening to blackbirds, the far-off shut of a door
I am rewriting the Triads, remembering
Rosa, Marie, Julia Long Golden Hair,
Three Women who Received the Beauty of Eve
and how like the sea they slipped from me
too easily—a litany of waves falls and
overwrites its moment.  O, how the sun silvers
the sea’s hand in the evening, it draws me back
to the Three Great Enchantments
and my work, listing—Capital,
the Solace of Purchase, its Pleasant Green—
and though the blackbirds sing, the Three
Steeds of Burden, Three Horses of Plunder
lumber onto my tongue and I wonder
what is it about Britain that names surfeit
like floods in spring for the Three Arrogant Men,
the Three Men of Shame, the Three Hard Slaps
that fell on the Island of Prydein
in the Year of our Lord, 2021.

Published in PN Review, Volume 48, No.6, 2022.

Note: the epithets in the poem are taken from Rachel Bromwich’s collation of the medieval Welsh Trioedd Ynys Prydein.

Memorial, St. Baglan’s Church, Llanfaglan

And also their fifth son
who gloriously fell while leading the forlorn
hope at the memorable siege of Badajoz

a fierce Welshman, preferring
the white eyes of night battle
to these silent hills, the Menai’s race.

What dreams take a man
to war’s red tide, where a Viscount’s gift
is death-bed promotion?

Sweeter perhaps than Mary Owen’s eyes
the catch of a lychgate—
retrenchment, breach, cunette.

Published in PN Review, Volume 48, No.6, 2022

Bedd Taliesin

Not grave enough
this cist for one so versed in court,
but I would take it

without the need to visit again,
holding still its random pillars
in my mind’s eye, its graze

rough capstone
table enough for glass or flask
and someone to say, I was here too.

Published in PN Review, Volume 48, No.6, 2022

Note: Bedd Taliesin is held in folklore to be the grave of the 6th Century Poet, Taliesin. It looks out over the Dyfi estuary.

Tales

What if I do not leave a mark
an act, a monument, a book
that someone would want to make
a book of me, a thing and say
he thought these thoughts
did these things, was not altogether
good—might I then escape
clean away, hold myself half true
until perhaps some passing trowel
should raise my bones upon a table
two thousand years hence and say
he was a man who lived on meat
and did not suffer wounds.

Published in PN Review, Volume 48, No.6, 2022.

Above Llanfairfechan

October, middle of, a slight chill in the air,
I’m sitting in the garden listening to a dog yelp
on the far hill, the year gathering its short clothes
for today’s last hurrah.  Tomorrow, I hear,
in the butcher’s, the plastic-free shop, on the street
it will turn cold, and doom lies heavy upon us,
so I let the sun play on me soft fireside warmth,
watch the last breeze of summer drag its heels
through the oak leaves, the Menai slowly empty
and in its way, were this all it would be perfect
but for the ins, the outs, of a left-behind wasp
wondering—here
here
no, there.

Published in PN Review, Volume 48, No.6, 2022

Wood

The garden walked me six miles today
stepping up then down its terraced slope
then up and down again 

again
ninety times along its twisting spine 
to bend and load again

again 
a tub of wood to rock 
each step upon my thigh and 

stack
stack 
stack 

down by the house as honeycomb 
the stove will suck and chew 
chortling through the long nights

Published in Response / Response, Hybriddreich, 2021

Because what is life without it

The sea less glass than slow, fat
you know what I mean
and then you come

breathing soft undulation
a slight lift, slapping below as if to wake me
bringing my mouth to words 

Slap
Slap
Below

and I have to ask
when I had shaped these eyes to plover
puffin, these little ringed things enough

why bring the wind here
Erato
why ruffle the sea with her scent

as though I were a young man 
and time and the sea were merciful
and love not unreasonable love

Published in Stand, Issue 228, Vol. 18, No.4, 2021

In a moment of absence

The road whispers 
in a language not heard these seventy years

the sea eats only its pebbles 
and can be heard calling its kinfolk 

who listen can listen
now the sea can be heard

and all the candy floss falls strangely silent
hoping for some tongue some

lips to stir and noise 
the blue of this place

which insists once more in singing
the lapwing a curlew’s song

Published in Ink Sweat & Tears, May 2021

Home to the Hebrides

Where are you running to
what are you looking for
rooting in other people’s abandonments

scraping time off the earth into spoil
for stone some sign of burning
a flicker of bone someone’s 

life to ponder their gut to digest 
through a slice of tooth
a peck of seed

What is it with this yearning
for remote punctuations in the sea’s 
gnarled page

as though the soul’s dark ink might talk
and you might hear more 
than the chatter of gannets

see more than waves unfurling
a whale puff
and disappear

Published in Ink Sweat & Tears, June 2020

Maeni Hirion, Penmaenmawr

Would you come here on days of winter, cold
like this, crossing the haunch of Tal y Fan
from the shade of your valley
to watch the sky burn itself to sleep—
or was this only ever a place for dead people?

I count tonight the nights, like stars in millions
between us, imagining how you took your turn to turn
eyes closed, thrice three within the stones
hoping perhaps for warmth, some ease
a peace from endless fighting

all the usual things people wish for down the years—
like an honest, less self-serving chieftain.

Published in Christmas / Winter, Volume 3, Black Bough Poetry, 2022

Afon Anafon

This is a river that kills

Barely ten foot wide in three stepped stones
I am over across to Hades
where on blistered rock
reamed white and lime with lichen
I watch water roll its leaps
from the mountain’s green belly
and it seems the all same

this side as much as the other an idyll
and I alone here this late summer’s day
save for a few sheep
searching out the elusive flower

It is hard to imagine in this warm light 
how winter comes and these bare hills 
bleed rain from every gully
spill
their spate-brown guts
two miles downstream
where tangled sheep
a hapless man
trail like any other river-weed

A revised version of a poem shortlisted for the Future Places Environmental Essay and Poetry Prize (2021)

Boatyard

She came for the sea, seal-black and looked at him
or did he look at her, her eyes buried
behind sunglasses, a smile meant for anyone

because this is what reliving is, this doing
of things once thought and not done
and now being done when love’s over.

Somewhere within him she registered, this moment
a leaf falling and seeking a place
where it turns and turns 

wanting to be soil — the trail to where it goes 
never quite blown over, and he 
unsure if he’s robbed himself or his heart’s been burgled. 

Published in Stand, Issue 228, Vol. 18, No.4, 2021

Lament

I set my heart on a wave in the Dyfi
watched it drift over sandbanks into reeds
and there an infant it nestled
in a cradle of goose down and leaves

and I turned my back on the Dyfi
its wildfowl, their meandering skein
and made my way to the city
with its hollow and blind-black dreams.

One day I’ll row back up the Dyfi
to see if my heart still breathes;
I’ll comb its red hair and my longing
to lullaby it on my knees

and if it’s no longer there in the Dyfi
plucked out by Elffin’s thieves 
life steal from me, wane my belonging
lay me in goose down and leave.

Published in The Dawntreader, Issue 56, 2021