Yes, Julie, Watkins wrote some powerful ballads, including The Ballad of the Mari Lwyd. Dylan Thomas complained (probably with good reason) that some of his friend's longer lyrics petered out out like thin white sausages. This shorter one is well sustained, I think, although the opening lines are especially striking.
THE RAZOR SHELL
I am the long lean razor shell:
Do not interpret me too soon.
Streak of the wind with tawny stains,
The sky's quill-feather marked my grooves,
The sea is hidden in my veins.
I am a part of all that moves,
And more than this, of what remains.
Here on the sand in burning noon
I lie, forgotten by the swell.
I hear the breakers and the oars
Falling along these level shores
And beating down the golden grains.
Let Solomon consider well
And take me cool into his hand,
Then ask, before he count the sand:
What is that labour to the moon?
This, too, is arguably worth preserving:
GREAT NIGHTS RETURNING
Great nights returning, midnight's constellations
Gather from groundfrost that unnatural brilliance.
Night now transfigures, walking in the starred ways,
Tears for the living.
Earth now takes back the secret of her changes.
All the wood's dropped leaves listen to your footfall.
Night has no tears, no sound among the branches;
Stopped is the swift stream.
Spirits were joined when hazel leaves were falling.
Then the stream hurrying told of separation
This is the fires' world, and the voice of Autumn
Stilled by the death-wand.
Under your heels the icy breath of Winter
Hardens all roots. The Leonids are flying.
Now the crisp stars, the circle of beginning;
Death, birth, united.
Nothing declines here. Energy is fire-born.
Twigs catch like stars or serve for your divining;
Lean down and hear the subterranean water
Crossed by the quick dead.
Now the soul knows the fire that first composed it
Sinks not with time but is renewed hereafter.
Death cannot steal the light which love has kindled
Nor the years change it.
Margaret
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