Wales Visitation

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White fog lifting & falling on mountain-brow
  Trees moving in rivers of wind
  The clouds arise
  as on a wave, gigantic eddy lifting mist
  above teeming ferns exquisitely swayed
  along a green crag
  glimpsed thru mullioned glass in valley raine—


Bardic, O Self, Visitacione, tell naught
  but what seen by one man in a vale in Albion,
  of the folk, whose physical sciences end in Ecology,
  the wisdom of earthly relations,
  of mouths & eyes interknit ten centuries visible
  orchards of mind language manifest human,
  of the satanic thistle that raises its horned symmetry
  flowering above sister grass-daisies’ pink tiny
  bloomlets angelic as lightbulbs—


Remember 160 miles from London’s symmetrical thorned tower
  & network of TV pictures flashing bearded your Self
  the lambs on the tree-nooked hillside this day bleating
  heard in Blake’s old ear, & the silent thought of Wordsworth in eld Stillness
  clouds passing through skeleton arches of Tintern Abbey—
  Bard Nameless as the Vast, babble to Vastness!


All the Valley quivered, one extended motion, wind
  undulating on mossy hills
  a giant wash that sank white fog delicately down red runnels
  on the mountainside
  whose leaf-branch tendrils moved asway
  in granitic undertow down—
and lifted the floating Nebulous upward, and lifted the arms of the trees
  and lifted the grasses an instant in balance
  and lifted the lambs to hold still
  and lifted the green of the hill, in one solemn wave


A solid mass of Heaven, mist-infused, ebbs thru the vale,
  a wavelet of Immensity, lapping gigantic through Llanthony Valley,
the length of all England, valley upon valley under Heaven’s ocean
  tonned with cloud-hang,
  —Heaven balanced on a grassblade.
Roar of the mountain wind slow, sigh of the body,
  One Being on the mountainside stirring gently
  Exquisite scales trembling everywhere in balance,
one motion thru the cloudy sky-floor shifting on the million feet of daisies,
one Majesty the motion that stirred wet grass quivering
  to the farthest tendril of white fog poured down
  through shivering flowers on the mountain’s head—


No imperfection in the budded mountain,
  Valleys breathe, heaven and earth move together,
  daisies push inches of yellow air, vegetables tremble,
  grass shimmers green
sheep speckle the mountainside, revolving their jaws with empty eyes,
  horses dance in the warm rain,
  tree-lined canals network live farmland,
  blueberries fringe stone walls on hawthorn’d hills,
  pheasants croak on meadows haired with fern—


Out, out on the hillside, into the ocean sound, into delicate gusts of wet air,
Fall on the ground, O great Wetness, O Mother, No harm on your body!
Stare close, no imperfection in the grass,
  each flower Buddha-eye, repeating the story,
  myriad-formed—
Kneel before the foxglove raising green buds, mauve bells dropped
  doubled down the stem trembling antennae,
  & look in the eyes of the branded lambs that stare
  breathing stockstill under dripping hawthorn—
I lay down mixing my beard with the wet hair of the mountainside,
  smelling the brown vagina-moist ground, harmless,
  tasting the violet thistle-hair, sweetness—
One being so balanced, so vast, that its softest breath
  moves every floweret in the stillness on the valley floor,
  trembles lamb-hair hung gossamer rain-beaded in the grass,
lifts trees on their roots, birds in the great draught
  hiding their strength in the rain, bearing same weight,


Groan thru breast and neck, a great Oh! to earth heart
  Calling our Presence together
  The great secret is no secret
  Senses fit the winds,
  Visible is visible,
  rain-mist curtains wave through the bearded vale,
  gray atoms wet the wind’s kabbala
Crosslegged on a rock in dusk rain,
  rubber booted in soft grass, mind moveless,
  breath trembles in white daisies by the roadside,
  Heaven breath and my own symmetric
  Airs wavering thru antlered green fern
drawn in my navel, same breath as breathes thru Capel-Y-Ffn,
  Sounds of Aleph and Aum
  through forests of gristle,
  my skull and Lord Hereford’s Knob equal,
  All Albion one.


What did I notice? Particulars! The
  vision of the great One is myriad—
  smoke curls upward from ashtray,
  house fire burned low,
The night, still wet & moody black heaven
  starless
  upward in motion with wet wind.

© Allen Ginsberg