Brett Evans

Anglo-Welsh goes Native

He floods the valley of himself,

leaves his church door open

where saints need to be drowned.

Not content with water rising

slowly over inscriptions on headstones,

this is violence: memorials ripped

from the earth – as he is on the surge

of surf. Elevated above spire, above

God, surrounding hills dwarf toward

him. Rose petals are cast skyward 

before their fight upon the crests,

thorns staked to his breast.

He struggles, swallows, spits,

the recapturing of a language denied;

a warrior who’d shun those three bloody

feathers. And when he shoulder-crashes

the shale shore knows he may awake

like the word itself – Wales – a foreigner

in his own country with a personality split

like slate.