If I had a thousand words 
to describe the King of Annwn’s cheekbones 

I would say they were like icebergs, 
like the hulls of the ships that crash into them and sink, 
like the angles of the limbs of the dead men who float to the surface, 
like the way He lays out the dead in the icy caverns where the ice dragon
roams with a single icy jewel hidden deep within his forehead.

I would say they are like the way He says
the letter ‘A’, the capital, with the triangular tip, 
as if it is not the beginning but the end of the alphabet.

I would say they are like the broken glass
of shattered coffins in my good dreams and not the bad.

I would say they are the antithesis of polar bears and the peak of antinomy.
I would say that I have seen many a skier slide down them to death.

I would say they are like runways and the paths of aircraft
and the flightpaths of starships,
the souls trampling
across them to the otherworld.

I would say they are like the travels of swans and geese.

I would say they are like the strobe lights that shine down 
from the helicopters that fly over my house at night,
sometimes hunting for the criminals 
as He is always hunting 
for the dead.

I would say
they are like the spotlight
in which I stood, dancing, seeking to win His favour.

I would say they are like His anger, like His fury, like His lament,
that they were bent with a hammer in a forge that was
neither hot nor cold nor even burning.

I would say they are his secret.

I would say everybody knows but keeps quiet.

I would say they are like the divine madness that unfolds
itself within His followers in their shapeshifting,
folding, unfolding, spreading wings.

I would say they are bone-light
but heavy in my hands.

I would say
they are like the precipice
I walked on so narrowly between life and death,
so very thin and dangerous on both sides a fall into the abyss.

I would say they were the answer to my prayer after a long dark night
of soul searching, the first slants of the appearance 
of a face in the darkness,
the first strokes
of a name written on my soul.

I would say they were the remedy 
to the poison within me, the pharmakon, the paradox.

I would say they were the pride that summoned me from shame.

I would say they were the answer to my cry for help.

I would say they will help old men 
and feeble infants regain
their dignity again.

I would say
they will once more
be serpents and dragons
with wings bent at cheek-bone-like angles.

I would say I have spoken only half the words 
and will speak the other half 
to him alone 
in death.