Between the dark Ystwyth and the angry sea

We walked the cold stone beach

From the swirling river mouth

To the striated rocks beneath the southern cliff

Their upended strata pointing the way across Tan y Bwlch

Beyond the town beneath its northern cliffs

 

A Celtic god watches and menaces

Black Lugus on Pen ddinas Maelor:

We brave his fierce storms which shade our day

As the squall waves crash to the rattle and suck

Of displaced pebbles returning to the deep

We stumble along a tide line black with sea cast seaweed

Scattered with driftwood logs and rope end flotsam

And a headless dogfish left by Cornippyn's rush -

Pecked over by gulls, its ribs and gills show faintly pink

Against the rasp grey skin and dark stones.

The horizon is darkly slate blue beneath towering cloud black

Rain slashing to the sea oft split by lightning

And as we hasten on, stones sliding beneath our feet,

Screaming gulls take off into the wind and land again protesting

The wind blows foamy sea spume across the beach

As the blue sky above begins to darken

 

At the foot of the cliff we hesitate and watch

The storm pass to the north over the town

Braced against the wind we begin the climb

The steep path slippery from past showers

Treacherous but for the footholds worn into it

Three quarters of the way up there is a sheltered dip

To the seaward side - a lookout's haven

But onward to the top some four hundred feet high -  

Now, we dare look the gods of Pen y Dinas in the eye

And the horn of Maelor Gawr stays silent.

South where they sky is lightening behind the storm

The coast stretches to a grey hazed peninsula on the horizon;

The rocks below the near cliff slope are black and foreboding

Untroubled by any save the gods, the waves and the birds

Yet still, the gathering weather threatens

So braving again the wrath of Lugus

And the wave thrown foam

We hurry North

To Hen Gaer