Heneglwys: Second Allied Forces

 

 

 

The Folly

Allied Forces

 

 

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Heneglwys

 

Sir,

 

In my researches into the vanished tribes

Which predate the era of Coel Hen

Who, I need hardly tell you, is known

to the modern reader of the nursery rhyme

A prelate of that village which calls itself Heneglwys

Whom my fellow in this enthusiasm is, had I but made

acquaintance with his own…his own scholarship, that is to say

prior to learning of a minor curiosity

his recent death prevents him to me imparting

The housekeeper he had employed

was a woman of Italian extraction

who had arrived—it is a charming story

Or parts of it may be said fairly—

To engage…

Arrived, I say, to instruct the widower’s daughters in ballet

She had produced a son (which rather cut the project short)

 

The guest wonders if this last will not be edited out

He sits back pensive and finds he has no idea of it

What the Pembrokeshire propriety allows, in this year of 1934

He must appear quite fond, taking the Shakespearean sense

of the word, dodder on…

Though he himself, born 1900, ages with the age

At some point in this slumbrous peroration, he must insult

And with a deadly delineation

The face and shape, and wastrel life, the parentage

(which he has done)

Of the man Falco

 

I have a name in my notes (he adds), of one Colonel Llewellyn

And nothing to point me why I’d written it down

I suppose him a retired officer who must know something

 

 

 

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Heneglwys

The Irrepressible

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2020, Stephanie Foster)