Cf.,:
"All right, I was Welsh. Does it matter?/ I spoke the tongue
that was passed on / To me in the place that I happened to be,"
('A Welsh Testament')
"he, too, is a winner of wars,/ Enduring like
a tree under the curious stars."('A Peasant')
"He[Prytherch] is like bark/
Weathering on the tree of his kind"('The Face')
"To live in Wales is to be conscious/ At dusk of the spilled blood/
That went to the making of the wild sky, / Dyeing the immaculate rivers"
('Welsh Landscape')
"We were a people taut for war; c/ Our kings died, or they were slain/
By the old treachery at the ford./c We were a people bred on legends,/
Warming our hands at the red past./ The great were ashamed of our loose rags/
Clinging stubbornly to the proud tree/ Of blood and birth,"
('Welsh History')
"your slow/ And patient surgery under the faint /
November rays of the sun's lamp"('Iago Prytherch')
"The slow years shall tame your tawny lust."
('Song at the Year's Turning')
"I turned,/ Often after a whole year, / Often twice in the same day,
/ To where you read in the slow book / Of the farm, turning the fields' pages/
So patiently, never tired / Of the land's story."('Servant')
"I have looked long at this land, Trying to understand /
My place in it - why c/ This was the camped womb/
At last took me in / From the void of unbeing./
Hate takes a long time/ To grow in, and mine /
Has increased from birth."('Those Others')
"You will return,/ He intimated; the heart's roots/
Are here under this black soil/ I labour at."
('Truth')
"Here,"
from Tares
You can also find this in
COLLECTED POEMS 1945-1990(J.M.Dent, 1993).
background image: Mid Welsh hills
This photo was taken in August 2003 by Yoshifum! Nagata