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).

Get Through / Kite by Byron Beynon

Get Through

I imagine myself 
inside an Edward Hopper painting, 
sitting in a diner 
alone and motionless, 
the black coffee getting cold, 
waiting for something 
within me to change 
when suddenly the atmosphere 
eases and I hear 
a trumpet sound 
played by a lean, 
cool Chet Baker 
embracing my silent mood, 
reaching out across 
the evening shadows, 
touching my sleeve, 
taking me along 
with those strong adjectives of music 
which climb and soar 
above the oppressive 
streets and traffic, 
telling me calmly of a way 
to get through.

  

Kite 

Her body is five months pregnant, 
she stands on a hill 
laughing to herself. 
Controlling the fresh 
strings of the kite 
she kindles a red 
swirl of ribbons. 
The movement of blind 
air carries towards a life 
soon to enter 
this fast world, 
touching it like purity, 
the gravity and pull of imagination, 
an innocent about to argue 
with dangerous time, 
the shining heartbeat of flesh and blood.

 

Byron Beynon lives in West Wales. His work has appeared in several publications including Poppy Road Review, The London Magazine, Galway Review, Poetry Wales and Black Mountain Review. Collections include The Echoing Coastline (Agenda Editions), The Sundial (Flutter Press) and Where Shadows Stir (The Seventh Quarry Press).

View from Ferryside by Byron Beynon

History oozing into pores

invigorates the past;
there's the castle for instance,
high on a humpbacked hill
reaching out from Llansteffan's
sand-ferrying shore.
The eternal language of seabirds
regional accents
in the warm rain
as they dive and soar,
sudden shifts in scale and tempo
recording the deep tales
from the journeying sea.
A landscape navigating
through the syllabus of days
that have vanished
onto the skin of time.
The air pure with thoughts,
clear with water-music
occupies this space
entering the cartographer's
coast of memory.

Byron Beynon lives in Wales. He is the author of 11 collections of poetry including The Sundial (Flutter Press), Cuffs (Rack Press) and The Echoing Coastline (Agenda Editions). A former co-editor of Roundyhouse Poetry Magazine.

Swallows by Byron Beynon

I sheltered inside the church porch,
a moment's interlude
on a day of absent 
cloud and June heat,
as the flexible sunlight
embraced the sea's nuances.
Above me an attentive
swallow fed a hungry splendour,
nature's itinerants, fork-tailed
survivors, an open chorus
waiting their turn.
Outside the sun carried
the long afternoon,
conducting destinies,
a durable trust
through the speculative air.





Byron Beynon lives in Swansea.  He coordinated the Wales section of the poetry anthology Fifty Strong (Heinemann).  His collections include The Sundial (Flutter Press), The Echoing Coastline (Agenda Editions),  and Nocturne in Blue (Lapwing Publications). A former co-editor of Roundyhouse Poetry Magazine.

Winter Over Nantyglo by Byron Beynon

It is difficult to see
down the valley tonight,
only the street lights
stretched like buoys in a dangerous world
offer the meat of comfort.
Here during winter
icicles resemble witches bones.
“Snow weather!” my uncle says
in a voice deliberate and frozen,
the colder elements annoy him. 
We shiver together
as the mountain streams
soften into silence,
their music is primitive
as they return 
to neolithic caves
forming elephant trunks.

Byron Beynon lives in West Wales. He coordinated the Wales section of the poetry anthology Fifty Strong (Heinemann).  His collections include The Sundial (Flutter Press), The Echoing Coastline (Agenda Editions), Cuffs (Rack Press) and Nocturne in Blue (Lapwing Publications). His selected poems appeared in 2018 (Bilingual: English/Romanian - published by Bibliotecha Universalis/Collectiile/ Revistei "Orizont Literar Contemporan", translations by Dr Monica Manolachi, University of Bucharest).

Ilston Revisited by Byron Beynon

A stream flowed beneath
an atmosphere of leaves,
time-remembered scenes
with trodden pathways
half-hidden away.
The scent of tangled growth,
yellow light piercing
the music of the heart.
It was an afternoon
when all I wanted was you,
and for familiar time
to stand still
over us, there we stood
side by side,
sharing this life's
fraction of breath,
our hands clasped
as one.

Byron Beynon lives in Wales. His work has appeared in several publications including Poppy Road Review, North of Oxford, The Grey Sparrow, The London Magazine, Poetry Ireland Review and Poetry Wales. Collections include The Sundial (Flutter Press), Nocturne in Blue (Lapwing Publications) and The Echoing Coastline (Agenda Editions).  His selected poems appeared in 2018 (Bilingual: English/Romanian - published by Bibliotecha Universalis/Collectiile/ Revistei "Orizont Literar Contemporan", translations by Dr Monica Manolachi, University of Bucharest).

Burry Holms by Byron Beynon

An island of limestone at one
with the face of elements,
where seabirds and flowers
keep company with monastic ruins
and the cut of earthwork;

the fizzle of summer foam
as the water edges nearer
through darkness and light,
where Cenydd breathed
the rich tide's odour and witnessed
the ebb and flow-lit skein in flight.

A gunmetal sky crossing and reaching 
above the rising waves,
the wind's unpredictable rush
striking at the earth's wildness.

Byron Beynon lives in West Wales. His collections include The Sundial (Flutter Press), The Echoing Coastline (Agenda Editions) and Nocturne in Blue (Lapwing Publications). His selected poems appeared in 2018 (Bilingual: English/Romanian - published by Bibliotecha Universalis/Collectiile/ Revistei "Orizont Literar Contemporan", translations by Dr Monica Manolachi, University of Bucharest).

Keats at Shanklin by Byron Beynon

on the 200th anniversary of his major odes 1819-2019

His final visit
where he watched
the daylight grow
from the east,
a new morning
set free from its moorings.
The intoxicated letters,
soft words kissed
where her lips had been.
A luminous landscape,
the sea, honeysuckles, 
eglantines observed,
delighting his thoughts.
The approved months
full of recall
as late-summer took hold,
his travelling mind soothed 
from the pains yet to come.

Byron Beynon lives in West Wales.  He coordinated the Wales section of the poetry anthology Fifty Strong (Heinemann).  His collections include The Sundial (Flutter Press), The Echoing Coastline (Agenda Editions),  Cuffs (Rack Press) and Nocturne in Blue (Lapwing Publications). His selected poems appeared in 2018 (Bilingual: English/Romanian - published by Bibliotecha Universalis/Collectiile/ Revistei "Orizont Literar Contemporan", translations by Dr Monica Manolachi, University of Bucharest).

Spanish Landscape by Byron Beynon

The day's heat lingers
as the remaining grains of light
listen for the music of cicadas.
He thinks of Carew, Chepstow, Kidwelly,
as he executes a Spanish
castle on its hill.
Unbearable hours
underneath an unforgiving sun
accelerates the mind's imagination.
Witnessed by a searching sky,
earth and scorched plants,
feverish veins jealous for
the love of a throbbing landscape,
at home with the palette's suit.

Byron Beynon lives in Wales. His work has been widely published in Europe, the USA and Australia. A former co-editor of Roundyhouse magazine, his collections include The Sundial (Flutter Press), Cuffs (Rack Press) and The Echoing Coastline (Agenda Editions).

Two Poems by Byron Beynon

The Tree

The tree I planted
twenty years ago
has been felled
along with its shadow.
Birds that paused
on its branches
have melted away.
The wind no longer vibrates,
its notes pass by
with an undulating silence,
a silence that blooms
with the dignity of night,
as its memory reaches
towards the splintered
gleams of the most secret stars.

Transient

Frost hardened snow,
a settled whiteness frozen
on inscribed stones
slanting towards light,
the echo and call of rooks
high above a shifting graveyard.
A father empties a pistol,
speeds a bullet
from a morning window.
An addict dreams of the solid
Black Bull.
The skeleton at the foot
of the bed summons
red-haired Branwell
from sleep.
This portrait artist with poems
published in the Halifax Guardian
paints himself out
between Emily and Charlotte,
a crowding which disturbed
the luxury of balance
transient in the Haworth air.

Byron Beynon's work has appeared in several publications including Poppy Road Review, Agenda, Santa Fe Literary Review, Crannog and Poetry Wales. Collections include The Sundial (Flutter Press), Nocturne in Blue (Lapwing Publications) and The Echoing Coastline (Agenda Editions).

Toulouse-Lautrec Exhibition by Byron Beynon

The Can Can tickets
removed from a November
coat-pocket guaranteed
the hour of entry.
Inside people squinny
nine courses of an exhibition.
Sexually-charged cabarets,
a world inside bars,
women, brothels,
the black boa of nightlife,
and a youthful Emile Bernard.
Friends in tender
yellow and white,
ironic caricatures,
recognised attacks of ill-health,
those fractured comments
articulated in preserved
frames of art.







Byron Beynon's work has appeared in several publications including Poppy Road Review, London Magazine, The Yellow Nib, Crannog, Plainsongs and The Muse (India). Also the human rights anthology In Protest (University of London and Keats House Poets).  He co-ordinated (on behalf of The Dylan Thomas Centre, Swansea) Wales's contribution to the anthology Fifty Strong (Heinemann). Collections include The Sundial (Flutter Press), Cuffs (Rack Press) and The Echoing Coastline (Agenda Editions).

Woman Weighing Pearls by Byron Beynon

after the painting by Jan Vermeer (1632-1675)

He begins with a blank canvas,
like a page waiting
for the poem whose words
will weigh on the heart's judgement.
The pearls flourish,
as she gazes gently
on scales that will give
her possessions and those empty
hours when sleep is hard to find.
The escape of light from a window,
unrehearsed shades
that bring concerns of an unstoppable future.
Her clothes are rich,
but how will she occupy
her thoughts during an uncertain age?

Byron Beynon lives in Swansea, Wales. His work has appeared in several publications including Poppy Road Review, Red Savina Review, Poetry Pacific, Written River, The Yellow Nib, Plainsongs and Chiron Review. Collections include The Sundial (Flutter Press), The Echoing Coastline (Agenda Editions) and Human Shores (Lapwing Publications).

The Magnolia Tree by Byron Beynon

Outside the abbey window
facing south,
near the furrowed path
I've walked,
the magnolia tree grows
timeless and mindful
as it shakes in the wind of thought.
There is a quietude here,
a storehouse of untamed depths
beyond anything known.
I have let my shadow 
fall on its trunk,
imagined how it felt
with the sun on its bark.
Understanding how
with each season's fraction
it will survive winter's blast,
its primitive roots of place
starless and mysterious
from the virulent frost.







Byron Beynon grew up in a village in West Wales. After living in London, Norway, France and Australia, he currently lives in Swansea, Wales. Among his collections are The Sundial (Flutter Press), The Echoing Coastline (Agenda Editions) and Through Ilston Wood (Lapwing Publications, Belfast).