Day's End Poem by Tony Jennett

With a final burst of red across the mirrored Llyn
The sun strikes copper from the glistening organ frieze
Of Glyder Fawr and sets behind Y Garn; old yogin
Lotus posed, his little lake couched twixt his knees:
A begging-bowl; where greying locks of old snow
Hang, echoes of Rhaeadr Ogwen far below.

Hands acrid from the inmost, secret, dark recesses
Of the rock face where we late imposed our youthful will,
And throbbing from the answering, stony, harsh caresses
The mountain gave us as we climbed our sated fill,
Vale bent we charge the rising veil of winter night
Rock-hopping through a star-sea of entranced delight.

And, spilling from the summits, every hollow filling
With mist, comes the cold: hardening the patchy snow
Which crackles like a battle's first wicked, chilling
Salvoes: as our tramping, carefree footsteps onward go;
Hushing with frosty breath a million chuckling springs;
And dusting with diamond rime the tussocks' huddled wings


And, darkling in a nook, bereft all day
Of company, our battered banger, never sold
In cafes in Bethesda, barks its roundelay
And staggers eastward, shying on the cold.
Snake-slippery road, and the rising moon
Dives through the sleeping hill-tops like a loon.

So long ago. Yet, piercing the decades' mist
Those days of hopeful happiness still shine
Etched into each grey cell, blessed and kissed
By memory, though for want of words' sweet wine
The real, oread magic we knew then
Lies choking with frustration in my pen.