When The Welsh Of Wales Go Home Poem by David Lewis Paget

There’s a distant drift of tides
That pitch at your troubled stare
And songs of a deep Welsh valley
Howl out from your wild, grey hair;
Then you sit, bright-eyed at the moonlight,
And you cry, bright-eyed at dawn,
There is no rest for the weary
When the Welsh of Wales go home.

You ride that distant country
While your eyes are mad with grief,
And you search for the things you lost there
Or you search for a long dead thief;
I speak, but get no answer
I question, cajole, implore,
You nod with an ancient wisdom,
And wake at a cottage door.

You knock, but find it empty
The thatch lies thick on the floor,
The shutters are hanging open
The latch, long torn from the door,
The sounds of distant children
You sense in the wind and weeds;
All gone, as if in an instant,
All scattered, like burdock seeds.

All gone, the lives you left there
Were storms that passed in the trees,
A light on the far horizon
Is all you have left of these,
For soon, you’ll go to my father,
Where he went, so bitter, so far,
And the Wales of the Welsh will claim you
At the last ‘Nos da.’

2 May 1994