Post by megli on Dec 21, 2007 18:05:45 GMT -1
This a recreation/semidemi-translation/work in progress, based on Dafydd ap Gwilym's 'Cywydd yr Eira', 'the Cywydd of the Snow'. I may keep on tinkering, but on this freezing night I thought I'd put it up even not quite finished.
Mark
Snow. God has whitewashed
the expanse of the black earth.
There's no forest ground not gowned in white,
no thicket not festooned with bedsheets.
Every branch is thickly furred
with sky-flour like April blossoms.
How will God vanish snow's burst bolster?
Where could he cram all this saintly goosedown?
Throughout Gwynedd they swarm,
heaven's white bees, all froth and foamfall,
hanks of snowfleece big as handfuls -
could it be that the heavenly host
has learned to spit and snitter down?
Well, white angels, it is true,
are setting up snow's scaffoldings,
for a trapdoor's been opened from below
into heaven's flour-loft; and suddenly -
snow! - a moment's silver ice-garment
slicks into the world like freezing mercury.
It lays like a cold cloak
to mortar hill and dale and dyke,
or a chilly groundsheet for the copse.
It chokes the woodland with white lime,
sky-salt of the tilled earth,
crusting the land's skin with wax.
Against its white and wheaten haze,
all the flatlands don tin breastplates.
A terrible drift of snowdust
obliterates the sheep-tracks,
like a chubby urchin in ermine-white,
prancing through the heather!
Under snow's steel petticoats
this land of mine crawls and creeps,
a wall of white from sea to sea.
Could it be the four-corned earth
has tottered, tumbled,
and dashed her brains out?
Mark
Snow. God has whitewashed
the expanse of the black earth.
There's no forest ground not gowned in white,
no thicket not festooned with bedsheets.
Every branch is thickly furred
with sky-flour like April blossoms.
How will God vanish snow's burst bolster?
Where could he cram all this saintly goosedown?
Throughout Gwynedd they swarm,
heaven's white bees, all froth and foamfall,
hanks of snowfleece big as handfuls -
could it be that the heavenly host
has learned to spit and snitter down?
Well, white angels, it is true,
are setting up snow's scaffoldings,
for a trapdoor's been opened from below
into heaven's flour-loft; and suddenly -
snow! - a moment's silver ice-garment
slicks into the world like freezing mercury.
It lays like a cold cloak
to mortar hill and dale and dyke,
or a chilly groundsheet for the copse.
It chokes the woodland with white lime,
sky-salt of the tilled earth,
crusting the land's skin with wax.
Against its white and wheaten haze,
all the flatlands don tin breastplates.
A terrible drift of snowdust
obliterates the sheep-tracks,
like a chubby urchin in ermine-white,
prancing through the heather!
Under snow's steel petticoats
this land of mine crawls and creeps,
a wall of white from sea to sea.
Could it be the four-corned earth
has tottered, tumbled,
and dashed her brains out?