The Mist

Yesterday (Thursday, my drinking day)
was a red-letter mark in the calendar.
I recovered my faith in women. Worn
wafer-thin with love, I was invited
to a love-tryst in the green cathedral,
a meeting made at my girl's choosing.

No man alive, under blaze of heaven,
knew of my pact with the shapely girl.
At sun's rising that Thursday morning
I leapt from bed brim full of laughter
and set my course to the small cottage
where the slim one was expecting me.

But now like a thief on the empty moor
a mist came creeping, a black cortege,
a parchment scroll, rain's manuscript,
clotted curds, a slippery hindrance,
a tin colander starting to rust through,
a fowling net on the swarthy soil.

A dark gate blocking a narrow path,
a winnowing sieve tossed up carelessly,
a monk's grey cowl shading the land,
darkening every vale and hollow,
a thorn fence bestriding the sky,
a purple bruise on the fogbound hill.

It was like wool, a thin veil of fleece
flimsy as smoke, a straw bonnet,
a hedge of rain barring my progress,
a coat of armour, a storm to soak me,
blinding my eyes so I was lost utterly,
a coarse cloak thrown over the county.

Then it was a castle right in my path,
hall of the fairy king, wind's territory,
a pair of fat cheeks chewing the earth,
torchbearers searching a pitchy sky
for its three pallid constellations,
a poet's blindfold, a bard's penalty.

A length of expensive cambric
thrown over the heavens, a halter
of spidery gossamer, French fabric,
on the moorland, fairies' realm,
a filmy breath of piebald smoke,
forest mist on a May morning.

Film on the eyes, a barking kennel,
ointment smeared on Hell's witches,
sodden dew become oddly sinister,
a discarded suit of damp chain-mail.
I'd sooner walk the pitch dark heath
than navigate this mist at noon.

At midnight stars light up the sky,
candles aflame in a dark chancel,
but this morning (bitter memory)
no moon, no stars, only a mist,
a prison door slammed behind me,
this mist, a misery past endurance.

Thus was my path curdled by clouds
leaving a stupefied stone-blind lover
stood stock-still, bereft of the sight
of Morfydd's elegant arching brows.