Friday Poem

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Friday Poem – ‘Sun, Earth and Moon scale model (Oxford Natural History Museum)’ by Glyn Edwards

View of the sun and moon seen over the curvature of the earth

To celebrate In Orbit by Glyn Edwards making the shortlist for Wales Book of the Year 2024, this week’s Friday Poem is Glyn’s poem ‘Sun, Earth and Moon scale model (Oxford Natural History Museum)’.

Sun, Earth and Moon scale model (Oxford Natural History Museum) To stand together by the gallery pillars looking down at Anning’s ichthyosaur, at a triceratops skull. To imagine the air as a dense strata filled with fossils. To notice then two pinheads in a display case and an explanation of scale beyond comprehension. To hear you count all nine zeros and read aloud that there is a third sphere across the hall the equivalent size and distance of the sun. To see how you first flinch then stare at the gilded ball and to know what you will ask next. To tell you there’s one billion seconds in a decade and to watch you translate our lives into time, and to watch you transpose time into distance, and to watch you lean so close to the glass that your head eclipses the painted earth, and its tiny, textured moon, and to watch you.

Voting is currently open for the Wales Book of the Year People’s Choice Award where you can support your favourite book on the shortlist. Don’t forget to vote if you haven’t already done so.

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Friday Poem – ‘Dannie’s Rock’ by Tony Curtis

Photo of foamy waves washing against a rocky shore

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Dannie’s Rock’ by Tony Curtis from his new collection Leaving the Hills.

Dannie’s Rock i.m. Dannie Abse Countless low tides leaving the Ogmore beach wide For walks, French cricket and burying fathers. Out to the west, half way to England, it seems, The sea baring its black teeth shows Tusker Rock, Ynys Twsgwr, tu skar, stark above the flat water, Fangs shown only because of the wrecks – A wheelhouse, ribs, blown open boiler room, Propellor, capstan, winch and chains, The long-broken spine of the S.S. Liban lost in a storm, And many others. The dead sailors and a child, All those who floundered, drowned, falling From the tilting decks to their cold deaths. A colony of starfish and mussels and goose barnacles Live and prosper on what we leave. The sea scans the same measured syllables, Songs that sound out of the scored waves. There are more stories to tell – Britten, Debussy, Always more music to raise from the chains of the deep; For these blind rocks, Dannie, Could never satisfy the hungers of our sea.

This poem was first published in Poetry Wales Magazine. You can download their special ebook Doctor and Magician: A Tribute to Dannie Abse, published to celebrate Dannie Abse’s centenary, from their website.

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