Pensman poem by Dyfed Lloyd Evans
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Pensman
A wordplay warrior wreaking havoc on the written page
Hearing the drumming of the words, writing out his rage
Saying: ‘This is the way, I’ll have my say
And right some wrongs, for on this day
I’ll unsheathe my pen and be, just be
This Don Quixote tilting with his quill
at literary mills
Erected by those dead white males
To ground our history to dust.
From their vantage-point
Of myopic classicisticy
Invites the pensman, bold
To write a retributive recipe
With just a hint of death — and seasoned
By a pinch of Ancient Celtic spice
The maggot in the mind
That darkness in the soul which speaks
In ways now far more eloquently
Than hinted-at by foreign words
Of battles fought and lost
And all the long-forgoten bones
Still dying in the ground;
Their owners' voices calling still
Their plaintive, pleading, calcifying cry
“Write for us, lend us your voice
The surety of your pen hand
And let us be from time and earth unearthed
Tell them who we are and let us rest, avenged.”
So sharpening his nib on inkwell side
He stabs it at the page, and in the bloody mist
Of spurting ink writes out the names of all the lost
Then tells the tale of those who brought them low
Gives to the vanquished voice.
Cries echoing across and through the bounds of time;
The thud of steel on flesh;
the leap of all-consuming flames
As conquered peoples' bloody end is told
But not by victors — not in our re-appraisal time
But by an ancient peoples’ champion,
Their fearless pensman, bold.
Hearing the drumming of the words, writing out his rage
Saying: ‘This is the way, I’ll have my say
And right some wrongs, for on this day
I’ll unsheathe my pen and be, just be
This Don Quixote tilting with his quill
at literary mills
Erected by those dead white males
To ground our history to dust.
From their vantage-point
Of myopic classicisticy
Invites the pensman, bold
To write a retributive recipe
With just a hint of death — and seasoned
By a pinch of Ancient Celtic spice
The maggot in the mind
That darkness in the soul which speaks
In ways now far more eloquently
Than hinted-at by foreign words
Of battles fought and lost
And all the long-forgoten bones
Still dying in the ground;
Their owners' voices calling still
Their plaintive, pleading, calcifying cry
“Write for us, lend us your voice
The surety of your pen hand
And let us be from time and earth unearthed
Tell them who we are and let us rest, avenged.”
So sharpening his nib on inkwell side
He stabs it at the page, and in the bloody mist
Of spurting ink writes out the names of all the lost
Then tells the tale of those who brought them low
Gives to the vanquished voice.
Cries echoing across and through the bounds of time;
The thud of steel on flesh;
the leap of all-consuming flames
As conquered peoples' bloody end is told
But not by victors — not in our re-appraisal time
But by an ancient peoples’ champion,
Their fearless pensman, bold.
Slightly retrospective this one. I'd been reading both poetry and history across the ages and the influence that the chroniclers had on what we perceive to be the truth of history struck me very deeply. The warroirs may fight, but others write down the histories.
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