An Egret at Portmeirion

A new poem by Gillian Clarke

Gillian Clarke
Gillian Clarke

after the conference

Evening silence and the crowds are gone
leaving a quiet hour, two alone
watching a lonely egret on the shore,
recalling all we share, art, life, and more,
designs and dreams, ideas, harmonies,
buildings, beauty, culture, histories.

At the edge of things the sea's retreat,
the come and go of water, salt and sweet,
draws the Dwyrid's tides in waterlight
the way a word, lines drawn on paper might
house us, unite us, Europeans all,
one force against the rise and fall of fools,

who clamour, cackle, crow. They come, they go,
less than an egret's feather on the flow.

READ SOME MORE

Gillian Clarke was National Poet of Wales 2008-2016. Recent publications include Selected Poems (Picador, 2016); Zoolog (Carcanet, 2017); her version of the seventh-century Welsh poem Y Gododdin (Faber, 2021); and a prose collection, Roots Home (Carcanet, 2021)