St Padarn

In fifteen hundred years since monks heaped loam
as blanket for your corpse, what they who loved
you knew has rotted with their brains; time’s mists
have swirled to hide that knowledge from our eyes.

Full six hundred years flicked by before
one quilled your Life. Blackberry-like your stories
grew till it was said your parents knew
each other only once with blessed timing,
a next best thing no doubt to virgin birth,
and also claimed that you out-Jesused Jesus —
not only did you raise your days-dead servant
murdered by the sword, but joined again
the head to neck. Although I wonder did
the poor chap ever after have a crick?

Perhaps such things could happen in the land
of Merlin and Morgana; what else but magic
could hold those flimsy soils to Cymru’s slopes
in rainstorms gathered from the sea and dumped?

Some scholars say that Life confounded two,
the one Amorican, and you of Cymru.
Few things we know. You travelled through the land
along old Roman roads; you were revered
for holiness; you set up monasteries,
some stormed by Vikings; you left your name behind
on villages that carry still your stamp.