La mamma

La mamma è sempre la mamma.

An Italian said to me, almost insistently,
‘Yes, but whatever peace you may wish her,
la Mamma è sempre la Mamma.
At least that is here what we say.’

I thought later that that was right.
You were always there.
From the start.
Are there still.
The still centre of my world.
Eternal.
Present.

And I feel almost panic.
That one day soon you will be gone.
Absent.
How sad and frightening
I foresee that being for me.
And though I’m 63
And have spent long years away
You have secretly remained,
the stubborn linchpin around which my compass swings
and steadies.
You were my north star even as I ventured south.

In these last year’s
Have we not achieved a softening,
An alchemical distillation of soft May evening light?
Somehow we dissolved
The rancour and bitterness.
The shadow-boxing ceased.
That wariness of the
Jawbone swinging hurt
We each could inflict
Found it was not needed still.
The clock spring
Of our irritations
Wound down.

A truce,
A hint of peace
Prevailed.
We held each other’s eye
Beyond the narrow horizons
Of our beginnings.

I have witnessed your noble heart-breaking aloneness.
And tried like some raft upon swift flowing waters
To tether myself beside you.
I, your fickle lighter, too often away.
But really here when here.
Distraught as I slip away again
On the early rising tide.

My sense of my emotions
Is like those fleeting cloud shadows over
That hill (Moel Ysgyfarnogod)
behind that house (Cae Rhys)
in that Wales (Trawsfynydd).

I am heavy with the rain and the wind to come.
Weather’s approaching and I have nowhere left to run.

Cwm Bychan, Bryn Goleu and Cae Adda
None can help me now.
Those cradles of the boy that became the man
Long gone.

Returning to the beginning
I’d choose to translate it thus:
‘For me you are forever my mother always’.
As well, of course as a woman in your own right
And a daughter too,
Long travelled from your native home.
But daughter still
With all the trouble and waspish glory
Implied by that simple single word.

But for me you are inescapably my mother.
Forever. Eternal.
Until the end.
And I forever.
Always.
Your son.
Until my end too.

È vero. It’s true.
Beyond the banality of the bleeding obvious:
La mamma è sempre
la mamma.

Don’t go.
And yet in peace
Go still into that night.
My love a light
Small but constant
Shining
Burning
Bright.