The Wind

The Wind

Y Gwynt

 

Wind who plies a sky-high trade

And scales peaks where none may tread,

Strange your shouting, sheer of fate:

Featherless flight, fleet of foot

Yet limbless, out of sky’s vault,

Launched to veer and never halt

About the slope, above the scree,

To sweep and fly, to swiftly flee.

No mount you need, no charger,

Bridge or boat to span the river.

Cornerless, you cannot snag

Or drown, founder, fall or flag.

Nest-breaker, none can charge you;

Leaf-churner, fools chase you,

Never held by law or swords,

Flood and rain are weak as words

To you. When oaks are felled

There’s no arrest. You’ll not be held

Or struck by mortal man,

Or fire-burnt. No cunning plan

Can stop or even spy you.

Wall of wind: none defy you.

Cloud-carver, brooder of rain,

Land-leaper, breath of ruin.

 

God’s blessing or Devil’s curse –

Trees in uproar mark your course –

Dry of humour, tight your grip,

Clouds downtrodden: mighty trip!

You stalk, you slink, lie in wait,

Whirl the snow like winnowed wheat.

Sing me your way, you North Wind,

Come and whisper where you wend.

You revel – when the sea churns –

On the shore and up the chines.

Inspired author, old enchanter,

Chasing leaves at a canter.

Jaunty jester on the deck,

Laughing round the tattered wreck.

 

The world’s length you leap and fly;

By this hill come whisking nigh.

To Uwch Aeron swiftly go,

Audible to all, and blow

Without pausing or restraint

In spite of Bwa Bach’s complaint.

With jealous, finger-pointing whine

He had me banished – woe be mine –

Alas that Morfudd won my heart

And I’m compelled to dwell apart,

Exiled from my golden girl:

Go to her house, and rave, and whirl.

 

Beat on the door, demand entry.

Buffet through and wind the sentry.

Bluster on to where she lies

And in her ear exhale my sighs.

As planets in their orbits whirl

Say this to my golden girl:

So long as earth shall bear life

I’ll follow her – as mistress, wife

Or unattained – each tomorrow,

By her faith, in troth to sorrow.

Soar and see: is she not fair?

Swoop and furl her gleaming hair.

Rise and slip my maid a sigh.

Return, treasure of the sky.

 

Source material: Poem by Dafydd ap Gwilym, paraphrased by Giles Watson. The beginning of Dafydd’s original is indebted to the riddling poem ‘To the Wind’ from the Book of Taliesin, but he takes the idea much further, linking it to the llatai tradition and metaphorically harnessing the wind as a love-messenger. Bwa Bach is husband to Morfudd, and therefore Dafydd's love-rival. Of all Dafydd’s poems, this perhaps bears testimony to his genius for blending tradition and innovation. The pun in the first line is a mark of my own indebtedness to Dylan Thomas’s ‘Fern Hill’.

 

Picture: Autumnal wind in Wantage churchyard.

Done