Published in 1988, Immrama is an old Irish word meaning “voyages to islands”, and many of its poems are journeys into the past or into a non-physical, spiritual dimension. Reviews spoke of “a sense of adventure, of going somewhere different” (Poetry Review) and “the exciting prospect of the future for a writer who clearly has so much more to say” (The New Welsh Review).
Publisher’s details
Seren, 1st & 2nd Floors
38-40 Nolton Street
Bridgend CF31 3BN
tel 01656-663018 or email here
Judas
Never in any church have I seen you;
never on windows or on squat misericords or carved
even in the dimmest, cobwebbed corner of a crypt;
and if I did, you would only be hanging,
clutching your silver ransom, offering
that treacherous kiss. They never have anything good
to say of you, and who can blame them?
Heretics are worse than unbelievers
in the eyes of the betrayed.
Still, I wonder how you would look, how they might
portray you – whether the beard would be swarthy;
the eyes shifty, aslant –
because there is a roundel here of Christ in Hell,
embracing a man waist-deep in fiery glass
whose mediaeval face turns up as if in shock.
The features of both are gone, scrubbed by history
to a blaze of sunlight, as if that moment
transcended all colour, all the
glazier’s power to create.
Perhaps it is something in the kiss
that makes me wonder if they meant it to be you.