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Winter Scene
(From the Chinese of Hung Sheng, 1645-1704 CE)

Bleak, bitter landscape – lonely hamlet at the close of day.
Hear the sad wind on the unshielded plain.
The deep stream flows, though troubled by the snow.
The frozen mountain halts the roving clouds.
Gulls and egrets on the wing can scarcely be descried;
islets and sand-banks, hard to seek out with the eye.
But near the bridge a scatter of plum trees grow,
and bamboos, of the truest green, in rows.


(From ‘Beneath the Silver River: Translations from Classical Chinese Poetry)

An Old-fashioned Christmas Card

Look! It’s snowing, and the coach
drives boldly in. Wheels leave
light blue rivulets on white.
Portly coachmen, nicely wrapped,
blow boisterously on long brass horns.
‘Holoo! Holoo! We’re here!’ they call.
And there strut the beaus
in close-fitting tail-coats, toppers atilt,
gold cane-tops all sparkle and shine.
On their arms – oh! – their ladies,
peeping through bonnets,
all snug in their tippets and muffs.
There’s young Captain Fauntleroy!

And the prim Miss FitzDaisy!
These ladies and gentlemen are smiling for us
fine eighteen-thirtyish smiles.

Through a shop’s bulging panes
some small children gaze. Their faces
we don’t see. Not the pallor of cheeks,
nor their dark rings of eyes,
nor, so often wanting, so seldom assuaged –
those mouths. Merely urchins, Yer Honour;
just street-fry, cor lummy! Only 

whippets emerged from their slum!
For the genteel sweeping by
they’ve deference in mind;
though the crowd doesn’t heed them one bit.
(But the Captain, to widen Mis FitzDaisy’s eyes,
directed some small-shot of wit).
Well, Good Sir, have a care… and sense
that despair which if injured can foster distrust
– disrespect, and despisal, oh yes, if you must –

for a cocksure toff in his topper,
and his madam in tippet and muff.


(From ‘Journeys in Time’)



This was one of the earliest poems I penned (pencilled, actually) in the first of my adult beginning-to-jot years. I was never happy with it, and after toying with it from time to seldom time over many decades, gave up making anything out of it. I gave it one final go, though, as I’ve nothing else with an outright Christmas theme.

The inspiration came from the kind of Christmas cards we used to see a lot, though it seams not so much now, when many cards are ‘jokey’, and greetings are for ‘the season’; often for the Winter Solstice. Regarding the times and the inevitable change they bring about, and the emendations and the looking back to which we’re prone, I suppose that’s understandable. But we’ll never, I think, stop seeing cards every year depicting the nativity of Jesus, Father Christmas/Santa Claus and depth-of-winter snow scenes. The cards I’m referring to are ones (I remember there used to be so many of them) with scenes from 18th/19th century town streets, with thick snow everywhere, gentlemen in top hats and top-boots, ladies in bonnets and furs, brightly lit house and shop windows, etc. I’m thinking particularly of one card I received which, because quite taken by the scene, I kept for years. It showed just such a scene, with the stagecoach noisily arriving, a red-coated officer out with his lady friend among happy passers-by, and two drab children, viewed from behind, looking into a shop window. The panes of this window were the small square ‘bubbled’ kind of those days and in the brightly-lit display within were the most wonderful dolls and doll’s houses for the girls, Nutcracker soldiers for the boys, red-and-white striped candy canes for both, and much else beyond the dreams of poor children. The young army officer – and it is undeniably he – with his companion, can be seen elsewhere, on the boxes of ‘Quality Street’ chocolates, which have been going for a long time. There he wears a shako, and carries a straight-edged sword, so most likely belongs to an infantry regiment. But how much more jolly and romantic to be togged-out in the uniform of a cavalry regiment back then, and wear one of those outrageous Gilbert & Sullivan busby-type hats of felt and fur covered with bits of brass, a gold-braided pelisse flung casually over one shoulder, and a sabre with which to slash away either at those confounded Frenchies at Waterloo [* my 2nd great-uncle John fell at Waterloo: Yes, I remember it was Platform 3 and he swore like a trooper] or at the mixed, milling crowd of civilians at Carmarthen Workhouse in 1843 (it didn’t matter which). Yes, he would have been an infantryman, a Grenadier perhaps. The marching song of my old regiment was ‘The British Grenadier’ [*the marching tune for all Grenadier and Fusilier regiments whose badge features a flaming fusil or grenade] – a regiment staggering under battle honours and the colours shot through and through, I may add – although I never did storm the palisades or see our little drummer-boy fall, shot through the heart. For viewers of a military bent in the United States the equivalent would be the marching song of the U.S. Marine Corps: ‘From the Halls of Montezuma’, etc. – the tune of which can be nicely sung, when among a large responsive crowd in expansive mood, to the words of ‘Calon Lân’. But this is to digress. Wait, though – about fusils; flank officers were allowed to carry shortened muskets called just that, or sometimes ‘fusees’. Short carbines, then; which is probably why the renowned and imposing carabinieri have a large-flamed fusil as their badge. Splendid uniforms, and a fine sight striding two abreast along Italian pavements/sidewalks. Oh, and except to say that all those swords were made by the Wilkinson Sword company, which today makes our safety razor blades. 



I’ve tried to keep the tone ‘Victorian’ through various devices, mostly through description and vocabulary. ‘Cor Lummy!’ is London slang derived from ‘Lord love me’. A related favourite I’d liked to have also used but could not find a place for is ‘Lawks-a-mercy!’ which found its way into London jargon via ‘Lord have mercy’. I should mention ‘despisal’, too, a word I like. Through one of the many quirks in the evolution of the English language no specifically accepted noun-form exists for ‘despise’. My thoughts went back in a sure jiffy of confirmation, though, to Francis Thompson’s lovely poem To a Snowflake, which I learned at school:

‘What heart would have thought you? -

Past our devisal
(O filigree petal!)
Fashioned so purely,
Fragilely, surely,
From what Paradisal
Imagineless metal,
Too costly for cost?
Who hammered you, wrought you,
from argentine vapour? –
‘God was my shaper.
Passing surmisal,

He hammered, he wrought me,

From curled silver vapour
To lust of His mind:-
Thou could not have thought me!
So purely, so palely,
Tinily, surely,
Mightily, frailly,
Insculped and embossed,
With His hammer of wind,
And His graver of frost.’


Devisal, surmisal… despisal.


That class-consciousness is at the core of the poem is self-evident, and serves to outline the ambivalence, the benevolence toward and disregard for, the poorer classes which existed in Victorian society. So, what light is shed upon the two principal characters? How are we to look upon Captain Fauntleroy and Miss FitzDaisy? Their names, to begin with, carry a certain humorous mockery, and the final couplet emphasizes this sort of light disdain in a wholly strident way. They are people, as can be seen, ‘of the first fashion’ – ‘posh’ people. The Captain is indubitably a toff, but that Miss FitzDaisy is termed his ‘madam’ his a ring to it that may be a bit unfair. Let’s take it that the remark which the poem’s unknown external observer elucidates from a child’s resentment means simply that she is also regarded as one of the ‘hoity-toity’. I like to think of her as a young lady much like the good, honest Amelia of Vanity Fair, and that a few steps along the street, out of earshot of the children, she firmly chided Fauntleroy for his remarks and that he was penitent and sheepish for at least the next five minutes, after which he, mustering his trampled thoughts, had it that he only said what he said ‘out of tricks’. Can we believe him? Possibly. One of his kind, the Captain, doubtlessly imbued with sufficient amour-propre from his good upbringing and the public school bonhomie of the Mess to steer through minor faux pas with young ladies (three in a row, by Jove!). Still, we don’t really know him; he might be a nice enough young fellow. I’ve no doubt that he had all the makings of a capable and courageous officer of the line.


There’s s a name for poetry which is motivated by pictures – ekphrasis, and ekphrastic verse appears to be presently enjoying a new popularity. Old photographs and postcards serve as good prompts. All those years ago when I first started work on this poem, I had no idea that I was writing ekphrastic poetry.


Postscript: There is one other Christmas-related poem on The Igam-Ogam Mabinogion, titled ‘The Funny Five Days’ which appeared on December 30, 2020. It features a collection of humorous verse by Jenni Wyn Hyatt (Williams), Steffan Balsom and Dafydd Hughes Lewis.

Introducing again the work of guest-poet Eric Bowen, whose previous contribution to The Igam-Ogam Mabinogion was the principal subject of the November, 2022 Armistice Day article The Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of The Eleventh Month (2). What better, now, than to introduce the poet in his own words? This is what Eric has to say about himself:

‘Eric Bowen, 70, is an American and heir to a preposterously long tradition (four centuries) about his family’s Welsh roots. Part of that tradition is that every generation, one of the Bowens returns to Wales to renew the family’s ties to the old country. Eric’s roots journey got out of hand and included along the way his part in the establishment of the Welsh Assembly, with the Cyfamodwyr granting him an honorary Welsh passport for his contributions to the campaign. He has become moderately conversant in the Welsh language, his elder daughter having been born nine months after his honeymoon taking the course in ‘Welsh for the Family’ at Canolfan Iaith Genedlaethol Nant Gwerthyn.

Eric lives in northwest Washington State and supports his hobbies, including swimming across the Nooksack River and hiking the lower slopes of the Koma Kulshan volcano, by working as an accountant. That being a conversation stopper, the narrative stops here’.

Moderately? Only moderately conversant in the Welsh language, did he say? Having read a good number of Eric’s fine englynion, I would strongly contest that. Here, in Welsh followed by an English translation, is his tribute to the miners of Wales who lost their lives below ground, and to the lost children of Aberfan:



Clychau Cymru

Yn llawen iawn mae’r gân yn son
Am glychau’n canu dan y don
Ond un isel iawn yn gorwedd
Cantre Gwaelod a wnaeth ei fedd.

Clychau Aberdyfi chwe waith;
Six Bells aeth â glowyr i’w gwaith
Bwrodd tanchwa ei hergyd nwyol
Ar y glowyr, ergyd farwol.

Yn y pyllau roedd bywioliaeth
Cydblethiad bywyd a marwolaeth
Trist oedd y clychau, yn eu cân
I blant a gollwyd yn Aberfan.

Tramor, mae’r clychau’n llawenhau
Yn galw ar y bobl  i’w dathliadau
Ond mae ein clychau ar y gwynt
Yn canu am golledion, amser gynt.

The Bells of Wales

In merry tones the tale we tell
Of bells that ring below the swell;
But ‘neath Aberdyfi’s waves
Lie Cantre Gwaelod’s watery graves.

Six times rang Aferdyfi’s bells
Six Bells, the coal mine in the dell
Where firedamp struck a killing blow
And claimed the miners deep below.

A livelihood was in the mines;
But life and death they intertwined:
The bells rang woeful, sad, and long
for children lost at Aberfan.

So oft we hear as joyful bells
Of victories, worship, weddings tell;
But Welsh bells ring of long ago
For all we lost, who lie below.

Eric Bowen

The first stanza concerns Cantre’r Gwaelod, the mythical kingdom said to have been suddenly engulfed by the waves and inundated in the dim and distant past, and now lies beneath Cardigan Bay. (The  subject is dealt with in the essay accompanying my poem The Morlo, which appeared in the Feb-Apr. 2020 section of The Igam-Ogam Mabinogion). From this story arose the song Clychau Aberdyfi / ‘The Bells of Aberdyfi’ It is Aberdyfi’s bells which relate the separate tales contained in each of the stanzas of the poem.

The second stanza tells of the disaster which occurred at the Six Bells colliery, Abertyleri, Gwent, on June 28, 1960, when an underground explosion caused by the ignition of carbon monoxide gas killed 45 of 48 men working in that area of the mine. This particular tragedy was chosen, obviously, because of the coincidence of the pit’s name with the ‘bells’ theme of the poem, but stands, of course, for all the many, many thousands of Welsh coal miners who have died over the years at their workplace underground, and indeed for those who lost their lives in mining disasters everywhere. In 2010 an impressive 20-metre-high steel sculpture of a miner – called Y Gwancheidwad / ‘The Guardian’ – was erected close to the now landscaped site of the old colliery.

Y GWANCHEIDWAD / THE GUARDIAN


The subject of the third stanza – that most cruel of them all which occurred on October 21, 1966  which took the lives of 116 children of the village of Aberfan, Wales, and which provides with a line from Eric’s poem the title of this article, needs no introduction. It is one which will always be in our minds. Eric tells me that he remembers, as a child, reading of the Aberfan disaster in The Seattle Times,  and how it made a lasting impression on him.

The fourth and final stanza sums it all up for us. In his translation, and in keeping with the stages of a past here related, Eric has made use of all the conventions of traditional verse.

Siardath

Sometimes she will come to me out of the stillness of the night,
and she will whisper to me out of all the ages secrets unknown to mortal men
in naked syllables strayed from illimitable gulfs.
And the tidings that she brings are shadows and insinuations of
the eternal heights and depths, messages splendid and at the same time awful
which awake in me the ancient spells of love and lust and grief and fear.
And I can remember but little of what she says,
but know that of the fleeting gold it has kindled – and which I know that all my days
I have been seeking and for which my longing knows no name – I can never truly share.
Nor is it lawful to call upon her, as neither to supplication nor to prayer
will she answer, nor be moved. But she will come in her own hour,
and in some unlooked for moment will suddenly be revealed to me
who will never find her should I seek; then gone again as through a door into the night.
And at such times will also pass from beyond that door strains of music
as heard within a dream, strange chords, faultless and alluring,
a wandering music, a far-off music that is one moment there and then is lost again.
A music that is not of this world; a music which can never be recaptured,
nor in all the years, once heard, will the cadence of it ever leave the mind at ease.
And in the light of day, in the quiet places, the distant, skirling strains of it
have come to me, fitful and disjointed – and I have heard it in the treetops,
and in running water, and in the whisper of the wind.
And I would awaken from this dream with naught recalled
except that it was of her, and of a deep attendant anguish. And I see, now, that
all the exiled ones whose minds are ever set upon a mystery
will at few and precious moments be gifted with an elusive echo of her
in what is beautiful and marvellous in the world – and that they must grasp at these
pale shadows so that they will be to them as brilliant jewels in their works.
Forbidden then am I to ever see her face, or to gain her side, and I am left
at the last disconsolate, and know anew that in the set paths of the world
will I never find contentment – but know that even so, in her name have I searched
the byways of cities of hewn stone, and bled a road through desolations of towering
thorns, and traversed the highways of crumbling empires.
I know not where she leads me, nor in her name what kings have quested,
what loves been lost and found, what farers braved the dubious ways, or sailed
the shifting seas. Still will I utter unto her the secrets of my soul,
she who I will never in my life behold, nor ever can forget.



(From ‘Of Poetry and Song’ )




Note: Pronunciation – The initial ‘Si’ of ‘Siardath’ is a digraph, as in Welsh, and pronounced as the English ‘sh’ sound, giving ‘Shardath’, whether the medial ‘r’ is rolled as in Welsh or elided as in English.

First in the ‘Manifestations of the Muse’ series was ‘Ceridwen’s Candle’ (Feb-Apr 2020). Due to its inherent difficulties the second has to date not been written. Third was ‘Island of Lesbos… ‘ (May-Jul 2021). This fourth and last in the series has waited a long time since its composition – until there came the satisfaction that its sentiments could be found to be wholly compatible with what is – in my mind – this Muse’s undiscovered name. Significant elements of the lady are found in other prose-poems, notably ‘Dialogues without Words’ (4) and (5) (Feb-Apr 2022 and May-Jul 2022 respectively).  Traces are also found elsewhere, in ‘Song of the Shulamite Maid’ (May-Jul 2021)’ and in other poems. 

‘Siardath’ is the summation of many years, a lifetime I would say, of unavoidably encroaching conscious and subconscious thought and experience – of emotions, instincts, intuitions, presentiments too, and of comparisons with like conclusions disclosed and identified in literature. Of the latter, the foremost, those with led to crystallization, were found in the work of two writers I admire greatly, namely, James Branch Cabell (1879-1958) and Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961). The backgrounds of the two could not be more different; Cabell, well-educated, urbane, comfortably off scion of an old established and well connected Virginian family; Smith, self-educated, impoverished, isolated. [* I have introduced Cabell in a rather humorous fashion in ‘In Praise of Ale’ (Nov 2021-Jan 2022) and more thoroughly in ‘Brush with an Artist’, long-time written but yet to make an appearance]. But for a small personal reason, as will be seen, I would like to add here something more about Smith:

Clark Ashton Smith lived for fifty years in a small cabin, which as a boy, he had helped his father build in the arid hills scattered with old mine-workings above the town of Auburn, northern California. Following the passing of his parents, his years there were ones of much loneliness and hardship. Occasionally, he found casual manual work ‘down below’; during one such absence, and I particularly mention this, he returned to find his cabin ransacked by vandalistic hoof-tramps. Anyway, it was there in those wild surroundings that his imagination gave release to stories and poems, paintings, and in later days sculptures carved from the soft mountainside stone. He produced many translations, too, the great majority being of French poetry – and this is where my one small, but personal and treasured, affinity with CAS comes in. In the introduction to the 3rd volume of their 2008 ‘Clark Ashton Smith: The Complete Poetry and Translations’, Joshi and Schultz relate that around 1919/1920 Smith had in his possession Bithell’s 1912 ‘Contemporary French Poetry’. Now this very copy they mention (it is a little somewhat bumped and bruised, but not exceptionally so, clothbound green duodecimo volume) I have in front of me – were I not two-finger typing I could say holding in my hand – at this very moment. I have it, Smith’s book, here, now, on my desk, as I type! On the flyleaf is lightly pencilled, in the man’s casually flowing signature, ‘Clark Ashton Smith’. Needless to say, book lovers, I am smiling as I look at it, and will now replace it in its brown-paper wrap and then within a light vinyl bag to protect it from dust and Formosa’s humidity and insect book-devourers. Yes, it gives me a warm feeling and elicits a smile to think that this is the very book which stood on the shelf in CAS’s lone cabin high on the ridge above Auburn, and further, to think of how many times he reached for it, and took it down to leaf through. The reason I made mention above of the wayward vandals who broke into the cabin is because – well, at least they left my book alone!  How did I come by it, you ask? Well, it was a gift from my son, Huw, who was presented with it following his contribution to a film about CAS. Huw, I will add, maintains many contacts with today’s leading authors of the supernatural / fantasy genre. In fact it was he who introduced me, more years ago than I can remember, to its past and present masters, from Hoffmann and other of the 18th and 19th century writers, through CAS’s and Cabell’s contemporaries, to today’s exponents. And why did I not simply take a photo of CAS’s little book to show you right here? Because I don’t have an iPhone, and can only do the most elementary things on a computer. Here, you are assured, is a mechanical moron, a world class technical dunce. All my posts on The Ig-Og are handled by my son, Ceri, a true computer marvel and a high-end, international award-winning graphic artist and designer. Unfortunately we don’t see each other all that often, and he is always ultra-busy. I send my articles to him, and there’s a bit of back and fore stuff involved in the checking process. That’s why the site is so black-and-white basic at present, while many people’s ‘blogs’ are up to the hilt in technicolour. So I’ve previously asked Ceri to only post the very few photos you’ll already see here. We will be close neighbours in the coming months, though, and then we can get our heads together regarding some illustrations here and there.

Now back to the spirit of Siardath and the influence of Cabell and Smith. Most of what is expressed and the way in which it is expressed in the prose-poem was derived  from Cabell. The elusive feminine ideal is evident throughout his work. For Cabell, this Muse, if I may call her that without insinuation, is named Ettarre, to whom he gives central place in a series of three novellas brought together in ‘The Witch Woman: A Trilogy About Her’. Witch Woman is indeed a suitable title for this lady, neither terrestrial nor mortal, who wanders through the ages, for like all goddesses, she reveals herself in many aspects, not all of which are beneficent to man, and in this respect she can be equated with the physical world, with Nature, which can be both giving and taking – but always impassive. The words of another prose-poem of mine, the bracketed words of which I have here changed to suit Siardath, have it thus:  ‘For [She] grants no favours unto man, /  nor is [She] mindful of him, / even as the earth upon which man dwells is mindful of his coming and his going; / neither the sea nor the storm respect him, / and the mountain knows naught of his good nor of his evil’.  It is the case of the torturer’s horse. I have read and re-read Cabell over many years, making at odd times notes, now very much scattered, as well as thoughts, also scattered over time, which have been brought together to fashion ‘Siardath’. How nearly Siardath might relate to Cabell’s ‘Witch Woman’ may be seen in brief in Cabell’s own ‘Note as to Ettarre’, which precedes his novella-trilogy:

‘All the young men everywhere that were poets have had their glimpse of the witch-woman’s loveliness; they have heard a cadence or two of that troubling music which accompanies the passing of Ettarre; and they have made, and they will make forever, their brave and passionate stories about the witch-woman, so long as youth endures among mankind and April returns punctually into the fine world which young people inhabit’.

Aptly, he begins the next paragraph with: ‘But we who are not young any longer… must behold Ettarre… with the eyes which time has given us… ‘. [* Cabell was far from a sapling when he wrote that, just as I now find myself in the same boat. Jestingly, however, I will venture to distance myself slightly from these words (even as I suspect Cabell would) and go along with Goethe where he says: (Faust, Book II Part II, I believe, the ‘Graecian Walpurgisnacht’) ‘My rusting-up is not complete. / The female form is still a treat’ or similar. Praise be that those miracles walk among us]. She has, to return to seriousness, been with us throughout the ages, from the Mother figurines of the Palaeolithic through Tyche, Rhea, Demeter, Isis, Hecate, Athena… Mary Magdalene so unjustly reviled and her namesake exalted (in Pauline-Constantiinian religio-political dogma to be imperially installed as Divine Protectress of Constantinople). Along with Babylon the Whore, the Pythoness of Delphi… and let us include earthly outsider manifestations real and imaginary: She is to be seen in such subsidiaries as Circe, Helen of Troy, Dido, Cleopatra, Jean d’Arc. In the pantheons of the East, there is Kali the Destroyer in India, and in China Kuanyin, Goddess of Mercy, although the characters of both are not as clear-cut as in this brief mention. In all they are indicative of everything that lies between Mother and Temptress.

With Smith my impressions came from various allusions in his poetry, but essentially lay in one only – his superb prose-poem ‘The Muse of Hyperborea’, or ‘The Muse of  the North’, written three days before Christmas,1929. I have classified it as a prose-poem with no hesitation whatsoever, but it does not appear in Smith’s ‘Selected Poems’, nor in Joshi and Schultz’ ‘Complete Poems’ mentioned above (this seems to be because it made its appearance as an item in his long-time-in-the-making cycle of ‘Hyperborean’ tales, being presented there as more or less a very short chapter). I imagine that Donald Sydney-Fryer must have included it in ‘Poems in Prose’, his volume on Smith’s prose-poems (one of the few CAS books I haven’t got); Steve Behrends certainly classified it as such in his 1990 literary biography of Smith. ‘The Muse of Hyperborea’ was first published in ‘The Fantasy Fan’, June, 1934, and I see that Will Murray does not mention it in the copyrighted list of other tales in his edition of his 1996 “The Book of Hyperborea’. So hoping that I’m making no infringement, here are some selected lines from the poem. The central association and the correspondence of feelings, it may be seen, are conveyed in ‘Siardath’.

‘Too far away is her wan and mortal face, and too remote are the lethal snows of her unimaginable breast, for mine eyes to behold them ever. But at whiles her whisper comes to me… And she speaks to me in a tongue I have never heard, but have always known; and she tells of deathly things and of things beautiful beyond the ecstatic desires of love… and her kiss, if one should ever attain it, would wither and slay like the kiss of lightning… And in some dawn of the desperate years, I shall go forth and follow where she calls…

Smith wrote it as a block of prose, with no special linear arrangement that would indicate verse. Although the theme is so much a presence throughout Cabell and has served, for me, as such a catalyst, his Witch Woman and her ‘music from behind the moon’ are so very powerfully distilled and epitomized in Smith’s ‘Muse…’




Postscript: For pressing reasons, I have not been able to post new poems and articles for many months. I trust that my regular readers are still out there and if they are on the ‘subscribers’ ‘ list will look in on this new poem. For anyone who is not aware, simply making a single comment on any of the poems will place you on the mailing list, and you will receive notice each time a new poem appears. Thank you, all!

I’d like to leave a personal message of apology to Paul B. Williams, who, after reading the notes to ‘The View from the top of the Mountain’ , sent me a query about the Felinfoel Mill(s). So sorry it’s taken so long – I eventually found what I was looking for among old papers packed away in a box (we’re in the middle of a big family move, here, which is why I haven’t posted anything new for such a long time). I’ll get down to replying as soon as I can, hoping that won’t be too long. As far as I can see,  Paul, your email address which accompanied your comment initially seems no longer to be there, so I’ll send my reply as an additional comment to ‘The View from the Top of the Mountain’, hoping  it won’t take me long. I did try searching Facebook for your name, but wasn’t sure on that count. Thanks again for your comment on the Hughes’ and ‘Y felin foel’.

The Cradles
(From the French of Sully Prudhomme, 1839-1907)


The great ships lie at the quayside,
lulled to-and-fro by the swell,
oblivious of little cradles
rocked by female hands.

But… there comes a day of parting,
when those women are bound to weep –
when adventurous men will be tempted
by horizons beyond their reach.

And on that day, aboard great ships,
when the homes they have left look so small,
men will feel themselves drawn landward again
by the cradles’ distant call.

By the cradles’ distant call.


Les Berceaux

Le long du quai les grandes vaisseaux,
Que la houle incline en silence,
Ne prennent pas garde aux berceaux,
Que le main des femmes balance.

Mais viendra le jour des adieux,
Car il faut que les femmes pleurent,
Et que les homes curieux
Tentent les horizons qui leurrent!

Et ce jour là les grandes vaisseaux
Fuyant le port qui diminue,
Sentent leur masse retenue
Par l’â me des lointains berceaux,

Par l’â me des lointains berceaux.


(From ‘Journeys in Time’)



Note: This is something of a free translation, and while I would normally strive to keep every important word (and many lesser items, even articles, conjunctions, etc.,) in the received language intact, I found it impossible with Prudhomme’s beautiful economy of words.  So above, much of the meaning is transferred by sentiments expressed within lines rather than individual words used. (To an extent this is done in more precise translation). In stanza 1 I’ve used ‘lulled’ instead of ‘swayed’ or a similar word, to describe the motion of ships at anchor, the intention being to connect the accidental movement of the ships with the causative action of the cradles. The method may be seen again in stanza 3, where ‘the homes they’ve left look so small’ is substituted for ‘the view of the port recedes’.

The rhyme-scheme of the translation is abcb. In the final line of stanza 1, though, try as I might, and I spent a considerable time on it, I could not for the life of me, by substitution, omission, or any other device, come up with anything to replace rocking by a mother’s hands (‘hands’ being the insurmountable difficulty). I honestly think that it would take a very, very good translator to come up with anything other than what Prudhomme so simply states, and I mean a translator who is also a poet – as a good many, sadly, although claiming to be such or claimed to be so by publishers or critics, most emphatically are not. I refer more specifically to translators in my own main field of experience, which is Classical Chinese.

Looking at the rhyming of stanza 1 again, there are ways in which it could be achieved – finding, for example, an alternative to what appears to be a quite necessary ‘swell’ in line 2 which would rhyme with the seemingly irreplaceable ’hands’ in line 4. This would almost certainly require a change of the word-order in line 2; I’ve attempted this, but nothing absolutely suitable has presented itself. Another possibility is in the transposition of lines 1 and 2 (another legitimate process in normal translation). It is Prudhomme’s straightforward and effective simplicity which warns against adopting these strategies; what is there that would not infringe upon his charming minimality?

Further to the comparison between ships and cradles, donkey’s y/ears ago I did a whole lot of research and over a long time on oared fighting ships, i.e., galleys from 500 BCE or so to a demise which came as late as our not-so-distant 19th century. In the case of the classical Greek trireme of the Piræus and the subsequent Roman types, the banked oars protruded almost exclusively directly from the hull, while the later, 13th century+ mediæval vessels of France, Spain, Venice, and others of the great Mediterranean powers used a superstructure above the gunwales to accommodate the rowers. This was essentially an outrigger – but what an outrigger It was a huge rectangular box resting lengthwise and beamwise atop the hull ; it went by various names at various times, the later and favourite of mine being the telaro (Italian or Spanish, I think). Where one of the special terms is not used, this is called the ‘rowing frame’. For its use in my never-to-be-finished long story The Armoured Isle, though, I adopted, instead, ‘rowing cradle’ (now whether I had seen this term used somewhere or whether it was an invention of mine at the time I can’t remember, but think the latter. A coincidence, when many years later I came across Prudhomme’s poem.

Those great galleys of the 15th-18th centuries were superb craft, and the wonderful reconstruction of Don John’s great flagship at Lepanto can be seen at Barcelona’s Maritime Museum. Once,  while on a day’s visit to Barcelona I naturally went along to see it, but on that particular day, to my great chagrin, it was as W.C. Fields’ Philadelphia – it was closed. (I did spend the better part of an hour, though, creeping around the perimeter of the huge glass case within which it is housed, peeping in and marvelling. There is much, and much that is surprising, that can be said about those great galleys of the period. They finally ended up, as most will know, as the prison hulks of Marseilles and Toulon, as Victor Hugo’s Jean Valjean (Les Miserables) and Eugene Süe’s Rodolph (Les Mystères de Paris) knew only too well.

How Nogood Boyo’s 4th Great-Grandfather, in the Small Hours of 19th March,
1798, had to Resort to Some Quick Thinking and was Thereafter Subject to an Agonizing Wait

The Spirit of the Vasty Deep
came and plucked me out of sleep.
He swooped across black plains of space
and wrapped dark folds about my face;
and in a voice sepulchral, dread,
quoth ‘I am the Lord: and thou art Dead’.

Nay, Lord’, quoth I (with my long-johns on)
and feeling wondrous live and strong,
‘Thou came’st as Saviour; this I see.
For in my sleep had come to me
a hellish dark nightmarish dream
(before Thou arrive’st upon the scene).
To hellish dark nightmarish men
was I delivered – unto them.
But Thou step’st up behind me then
with Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and – Ben,
and all the angels in Thy team,
and an awful power and a light serene
did smite those hellish nightmare men
who cast lots for my body, when
I lay there quaking, sure to go,
but Thou, O Lord, did open the door.
Nay, Lord, I’m alive’, quoth I, ‘not dead.
See’st not I’m sitting on my bed?
And mine eyes see light and my heart doth beat,
and the good earth firm beneath my feet?
And the clock ticketh on? And the cock doth bellow?
– and I hear my neighbour berating his fellow –
and my breath’s on the casement, and I smell wild thyme…
and they’re getting impatient at the front of Thy line!
Thou made’st a mistake!‘ quoth I, afeared,
and mine eyes aburst with salty tears.
‘They entered my sleep. I was beat and bound.
They diced for my soul – but now I’m found! 
Thou made’st a mistake’, countered I to Him.

He surveyed. He frowned. He looked all grim.
And not all the fiends in my dark dream’s den
could have scared me more than He scared me then –
for the look of the Lord was the look of doom,
of his cohorts cant’ring the Vale of Gloom,
sable the steeds, black nostrils aflare,
flanks a-shiver, wild eyes a-glare,
hoofs striking brimstone, spilling sparks,
traversing the floor of that valley stark.
Long, long He looked from all His darkling throng.
Intransigent as stone. The clock ticked on.

‘Thou made’st a mistake… ‘ An echo of my mind
alone – no voice. Then the Lord did sigh. 
The sigh of the Lord was the wind that roars
from the uplands in winter down to our doors
and lifts the latch and the bolt doth rattle,
as though demons without prepare for battle;
that whines through the farmyard and blasts the byre
and reddens the ashes low in the fire;
that huddles the sheep on the bald hillsides;
that knocks and taps in the ancient mines.
‘Thou made’st a mistake…‘ pulsed my foolish heart,
                    alone in hope – not mine.
Intransigence. Hope gone. ‘Then dear Lord – ‘ groped I,
‘ – grant unto your son one smile?‘

A-sudden, did I fancy then some shimmer in all that
                    deathly gloom
as first light, stealthy stranger, creeps into a room
unbidden? Unbid, but joyous – in a space
to banish ghastly darkness to some other time,
                    some other place,
and sudden, astounded by the dawn, the day is live?
And the Lord, the Lord, and did he smile?

Oh! The smile of the Lord was the ripple that grows
on the sea’s twilight waters and turns it to gold;
‘twas the flash of the dew on the grass in the morn
when the air is a-tremble as bird-song is born;
‘twas the sheen and the silver of clouds as they run
in the high open spaces about the old sun …
Yea, a-sudden, astounding as the dawn, pity sundered
                    that almighty face,
and turning to his host, quoth the Lord, with grace:
‘Matthew, Mark, Luke, and – Ron;
get back to bed… with thy long-johns on’.

[From ‘Welsh Past and Present’]

Messer Paolo Gianocci Recalls Labarra
(Northern Italy, c.1565).

From plains of candled asphodel
the Titian mountains soar
to raise their haughty, serried heights
against empyrian’s door;
and up their cheeks and shoulders
the grey-blue pinewoods climb,
but brushstrokes in the distance,
and hazy strokes, and fine.
While crowded in the plainfold
mimosa’s bolder hues
compete with dark acacia
and juniper; and strewn
with darkest ivies
the ancient farmhouse stands,
a monument to crowded time
in a time-enshrouded land.
God bless the ancient farmhouse –
God bless the people there.
And look! The crimson dragonfly
now rides Labarra’s air!


[From Journeys in Time]



Nothing is known of Paolo Gianocci other than what appears in a letter of Donato Selimbeni of Siena, physician to Cardinal Legate Pandolfo de’Nerli in the year 1532. In this later letter Messer Selimbeni mentions Gianocci as a friend of Pompeo del Bene, painter and organist of Florence, and that Gianocci was a native of the region about Lake Garda. From this brief I have constructed the backdrop to the poem, in which Paolo, in conversation with Pompeo,  revisits his boyhood home of Labarra (the place-name is invented for the poem, and the date 1565 from juggling with what very scant evidence exists for Salimbeni and del Bene) perhaps while both were contemplating an actual or planned work by the artist.


Asphodel:  Although it entered the English language via a different path, ‘daffodil’ (Middle English affodil ) derives from the same etymological root (i.e., Greek asphodelos) as ‘asphodel’. As the daffodil  (Welsh cennin Pedr, ‘Peter’s Leek’) is one of the two national plant emblems of Wales – indeed, it has become the national flower – readers might find this linguistic connection to be of interest. The Yellow Asphodel, or ‘King’s Spear’ would slot very nicely into the picture.

I began looking into the etymology of the asphodel around thirty or more years ago in connection with my (still unfinished!) story The Armoured Isle, to which references (notably several poems) have previously appeared in ‘The Ig-Og’. Specifically the connection is with a locality in the story which was part of a larger region of volcanic ash known as ‘The Plain of Candles’ from its profusion of tall asphodel ‘candles’. Now the above-mentioned Greek asphodelos/*hasphodelos derives ultimately from spodos, ‘ash’, and the principal source of my then research – a real, live, old-fashioned, hold-in-the-hand book, I might add – appropriately and picturesquely suggested that from its ashen-grey leafage and yellow bloom the name would mean ‘emberflower’. It was both surprising and pleasing to find how neatly this explanation fitted in with my imaginary scenery. The ‘Asphodel Meadows’ figure in Greek mythology as a region of the underworld reserved for a certain class of souls of the departed, and which might find reflection in the later Christian half-way-house’ of ‘Purgatory’.

This is an interim post, as I haven’t posted any poems for some weeks now and wanted to get this to my readers before Christmas. The poem will be posted again at some time in the near future, next time complete with notes. Nadolig Llawen i bawb!



The Inheritance of the Peasant Girl

She laughed
and all the honesty of centuries
cascaded to the air.
And I was struck,
arrested by the wonder of that sound,
to think that there were, still, women such as she –   
incomparably good and honest women,
capable of such love
and inward strength
and pure compassion – 
and that all this that I knew lay within her
had lived within those that came before her,
and could be revealed by a single moment
of such guileless spontaneity;
could keep alive, like this, the riches of our unknown kin;
bequeath to us the voice of all the ages.


(From ‘Mysteries: Poetic Reflections on Womankind and Love’)

I’ll Not Forget
(From the French of Charles Baudelaire)

I’ll not forget, close to the town,
our little white house… so tranquil it was,
with its statue of Venus and the goddess of fruits,
their charms partly hidden by spindly leaves.
And the sunbeams at evening, streaming, superb,
through the panes of the window seemed to scatter like spray.
That great, curious eye, that inquisitive sky,
which quietly, silently, watched as we dined,
spreading wide their reflections in a candle-light glow
on our delicate linen and curtains of serge.


Je n’ai pas oublié, voisine de la ville,
Notre blanch maison, petite mais tranquille;
Sa Pomone de plâtre et sa vieille Vénus
Dans un bosquet chétif cachant leurs membres nus;
Et le soleil, le soir, ruisselant et superbe,
Qui, derrière la vitre oùse brisait sa gerbe,
Semblait, grande oeil ouvert dans le ciel curieux,
Contempler nos dîners longs et silencieux,
Répandant largement ses beaux reflets de cierge
Sur la nappe frugale et les rideaux de serge.


(From ‘Journeys in Time’)