:01:08
I am packing my belongings in the shawlmy mother used to wear to the market,
:01:13
and I am going from my valley.
:01:15
And this time I shall never return.
:01:19
I am leaving behind memy 50 years of memory.
:01:23
Memory.
:01:25
Strange that the mind will forget so muchof what only this moment is passed,
:01:30
and yet hold clear and brightthe memory of what happened years ago,
:01:34
of men and women long since dead.
:01:37
Yet who shall saywhat is real and what is not?
:01:41
Can I believe my friends all gone,
:01:43
when their voices are still a glory in my ears?h
:01:47
No. And I will stand to say no and no again,
:01:51
for they remain a living truth within my mind.
:01:54
There is no fence nor hedgearound time that is gone.o
:01:58
You can go back and have whatyou like of it, if you can remember.
:02:01
So I can close my eyes on my valleyas it is today and it is gone,
:02:05
and I see it as it was when I was a boy.
:02:09
Green it was, and possessedof the plenty of the earth.
:02:12
In all Wales, there was none so beautiful.
:02:16
Everything I ever learnt asa small boy came from my father,
:02:20
and I never found anything he ever told meto be wrong or worthless.
:02:24
The simple lessons he taught meare as sharp and clear in my mind
:02:28
as if I had heard them only yesterday.
:02:33
In those days, the black slag,the waste of the coal pits,
:02:38
had only begun to cover the side of our hill,
:02:41
not yet enough to mar the countryside,nor blacken the beauty of our village.
:02:48
For the colliery had only begun to pokeits skinny black fingers through the green.
:02:57
I can hear even nowthe voice of my sister Angharad.
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