{"id":58,"date":"2017-01-22T21:00:01","date_gmt":"2017-01-22T21:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gillianclarke.co.uk\/gc2017\/?page_id=58"},"modified":"2017-02-28T16:33:50","modified_gmt":"2017-02-28T16:33:50","slug":"miracle-on-st-davids-day","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.gillianclarke.co.uk\/gc2017\/miracle-on-st-davids-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Miracle On St David\u2019s Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

All you need to know about this poem is that it is a true story. It happened in the \u201970s, and it took me years to find a way to write the poem.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018They flash upon that inward eye
\nwhich is the bliss of solitude\u2019
\n(from \u2018The Daffodils\u2019 by William Wordsworth)<\/p>\n

An afternoon yellow and open-mouthed
\nwith daffodils. The sun treads the path
\namong cedars and enormous oaks.
\nIt might be a country house, guests strolling,
\nthe rumps of gardeners between nursery shrubs.<\/p>\n

I am reading poetry to the insane.
\nAn old woman, interrupting, offers
\nas many buckets of coal as I need.
\nA beautiful chestnut-haired boy listens
\nentirely absorbed. A schizophrenic<\/p>\n

on a good day, they tell me later.
\nIn a cage of first March sun a woman
\nsits not listening, not feeling.
\nIn her neat clothes the woman is absent.
\nA big, mild man is tenderly led<\/p>\n

to his chair. He has never spoken.
\nHis labourer\u2019s hands on his knees, he rocks
\ngently to the rhythms of the poems.
\nI read to their presences, absences,
\nto the big, dumb labouring man as he rocks.<\/p>\n

He is suddenly standing, silently,
\nhuge and mild, but I feel afraid. Like slow
\nmovement of spring water or the first bird
\nof the year in the breaking darkness,
\nthe labourer\u2019s voice recites \u2018The Daffodils\u2019.<\/p>\n

The nurses are frozen, alert; the patients
\nseem to listen. He is hoarse but word-perfect.
\nOutside the daffodils are still as wax,
\na thousand, ten thousand, their syllables
\nunspoken, their creams and yellows still.<\/p>\n

Forty years ago, in a Valleys school,
\nthe class recited poetry by rote.
\nSince the dumbness of misery fell
\nhe has remembered there was a music
\nof speech and that once he had something to say.<\/p>\n

When he\u2019s done, before the applause, we observe
\nthe flowers\u2019 silence. A thrush sings
\nand the daffodils are flame.<\/p>\n