Contemporary Poetry

dialects, idiolects and multilingual poetries 187

continuity between how things are represented through language
and an innate symbolism:

Then the S in the tail of the crocodile

will make perfect sense to the bibliophile

who will study this land, his second Torah.

All this was revealed. Now I wait for the Lord

to move heaven and earth to send me abroad

and fulfi l His bold promise to Florida. (p. 9 )

This desire for a unity between word and object becomes a pil-
grim’s quest. Lewis is alert to the humorous ambitions of such
a journey. Indeed, even God intervenes at the end, closing the
Atlantic, bridging the gap between the continents of Europe and
the Americas, allowing the speaker’s immediate passage. The
poem points towards a landscape where there was once not only
geographical unity but a divine linguistic order.
Lewis’s sequence ‘Welsh Espionage’ navigates with clarity the
immediate cultural clash between English and Welsh. A father
teaches his daughter English through gesturing to parts of the
body. As a consequence Lewis embeds Welsh names with English,
such as ‘penelin’ for elbow, ‘gwallt’ for hair, ‘dwrn’ for fi st, ‘gwe-
fusau’ for lips and ‘llygaid’ for eyes’ as part of the ‘fetishist quiz’
(p. 42 ). We are told that ‘Each part he touched in their secret game
/ thrilled as she whispered its English name’ (p. 42 ). Critics have
commented upon the suggestion of sexual abuse in this poem,
and it is clear that the site where the two languages intersect is the
body. On fi rst glance the translations seem straightforward, but on
closer consideration both languages are jostling for ascendancy and
power. Italics switch their roles; pedagogy is represented through
the English and a certain active agency in Welsh. The duality of
what the poet refers to as having two mother tongues is underwrit-
ten with unease and guilt. Lewis’s commentary is insightful:

I suspect that this sinister suggestion was a way for me to

explore the discomfort I felt at being born between two

cultures. Early on I had an acute sense of the cultural clash