The Anathemata
Rite and Fore-time (continued)
Before the slow estuarine alchemies had coal-blacked the green dryad-ways over the fire-clayed seat-eartha along all the utile seams from Taff to Tâf.2
David Jones notes
2 Symbolically speaking only, these two rivers can be said to bound, on the east and on the west, the South Wales coalfield. Taff rhymes with saff in saffron, but Tâf (tahv) rhymes with calve.
additional notes
a seat-earth: the soil beneath a coal seam, being the remains of the carboniferous swamp in which the forests were rooted.
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