Sun rising early in the lowering east
rosy light cold comfort against the polar wind
sweeping fifty miles of icy lake
No green leek or yellow daffodil breaking the soundless white,
brightening hat or adorning brow
frozen drifts and frozen ground and a frozen hole
for the lowering down
Dewi Sant they call him
born of Ceredigion
founding his church in Glyn Rhosyn, Vale of Roses
hard on the western headland
His cathedral crowns St. Davids
smallest city of Albion’s isle
Seventeen hundred ninety seven souls,
without a cathedral you are a town
never mind how grand or teeming
Dewi died on the first of March at the age of one hundred
so leek or the daffodil, Peter’s Leek, cenhinen Bedr
worn in remembrance
Remembering another
wending our way down Cuyahoga’s Vale
to the burying ground
far from any hollow on the banks of the Gauley,
holding daffodils on Dydd Gŵyl Dewi
fixing them above our brows
gathering in the chilling wind,
frozen drifts and frozen ground and a frozen hole
for the lowering down