Art Treasures / Garn Lake by Byron Beynon

Art Treasures  

Into the secret silence of Manod 

quarry they deposited like Hamelin's children 

  

the National's collection of air-conditioned art, 

safeguarded for posterity inside a Welsh cavern 

  

to escape for five years 

the blitz of a city's acid heart. 

  

Impressionism in central Gwynedd, 

Rembrandt next to Ffestiniog's slate, 

  

sculpted to remember, not to be erased, 

the palettes of durable colour, 

  

an exact style entering the darkness 

brightening a craggy mouth in Wales. 

  

  

*During the Second World War paintings from the National Gallery, Londonwere stored in a quarry in Wales for safe keeping until the war was over.

  

  

Garn Lake

  

She is part of the scenery, 

a human face 

that allows the medicine of nature 

to heal mortal pain. 

The experienced mountains 

observe her stillness 

as wildflowers grow 

near her feet. 

The lake’s sheen 

nurtured by time, 

engages the shore, 

recalls a world 

before wounds and pollution 

as the motion of the day's 

illumination renews 

a depth of captured rhythms. 

 

Byron Beynon's work has appeared in Poetry Wales, The London Magazine, The Yellow Nib, The Honest Ulsterman, Worcester Review and the anthology Winter in America (Again) (Carbonation Press). His most recent collection is Where Shadows Stir (The Seventh Quarry Press).