Beneath The Mountainside

The book with a copy of Chamberlain's 'A Rope of Vines'

 

 

A week or so ago, whilst digging around and looking for information on my village about which to write, I chanced upon someone of whom I have to admit I was shamefully hitherto unaware. Either that or equally shamefully, some previous knowledge had somehow escaped through the cracks of memory only to evaporate for good. For my part, though, some mitigation lies in the knowledge that I was only sixteen when this person died, and living in Birmingham, not Rachub.

The person in question is Brenda Chamberlain, artist and writer, born in Bangor, trained in London; who lived in the cottage at the top of the field behind our house, just by the mountain gate, between 1936 and 1947; before leaving to live on Ynys Enlli, her marriage to artist-craftsman John Petts have recently broken up. In the years they lived in Rachub, the two formed The Caseg Press and published a series of six broadsheets, encouraged and helped by Alun Lewis, poet and at the time, soldier. The broadsheets featured poems by Lewis, Dylan Thomas and Lynette Roberts, amongst others. I've just taken delivery of a copy of Chamberlain's account of the formation of the press, in the form of correspondence between herself and Lewis during those years, whilst he was on active service. I'll write more when I've discovered more, but in the meantime, here's one of Lewis' poems, that he included in his letter to her, of April 14th 1941, whilst stationed in Hampshire.

The Sentry by Alun Lewis

I have begun to die.
For now at last I know
That there is no escape
From Night. Not any dream
Nor breathless images nor sleep
Touch my bat's eyes; I hang
Leathery-hard from the hidden roof
Of Night; and sleeplessly
I watch within sleep's province.
I have left
The lovely bodies of the boy and girl
Deep in each other's placid arms.
And I have left
The beautiful lanes of sleep
That barefoot lovers follow to this last
Cold shore of thought I guard.
I have begun to die
And the gun's implacable silence
Is my black interim, my youth and age,
In the flower of fury,
The folded poppy,
Night.