Waldo Williams (1904-1971), who joined Friends in 1953, was one of the foremost Welsh poets of the twentieth century. His poem 'Mewn dau gae' finds a place here, not because it reflects on creativity, but as a vivid example of the power of words to evoke the deep mysteries of life.
Mewn dau gae
Where did the sea of light roll from
Onto Flower Meadow Field and Flower Field?
After I'd searched for long in the dark land,
The one that was always, whence did he come?
Who, O who was the marksman, the sudden enlightener? The
roller of the sea was the field's living hunter.
From above bright-billed whistlers, prudent scurry of lapwings,
The great quiet he brought me.
Excitement he gave me, where only
The sun's thought stirred to lyrics of warmth,
Crackle of gorse that was ripe on escarpments,
Hosting of rushes in their dream of blue sky.
When the imagination wakens, who calls
Rise up and walk, dance, look at the world?
Who is it hiding in the midst of the words
That were there on Flower Meadow Field and Flower Field?
And when the big clouds, the fugitive pilgrims,
Were red with the sunset of stormy November,
Down where the ashtrees and maples divided the fields,
The song of the wind was deep like deep silence.
Who, in the midst of the pomp, the super-abundance,
Stands there inviting, containing it all?
Each witness's witness, each memory's memory, life of each life,
Quiet calmer of the troubled self.
Till at last the whole world came into the stillness
And on the two fields his people walked,
And through, and between, and about them, goodwill widened
And rose out of hiding, to make them all one,
As when the few of us forayed with pitchforks
Or from heavy meadows lugged thatching of rush,
How close we came then, one to another -
The quiet huntsman so cast his net round us!
Ages of the blood on the grass and the light of grief
Who whistled through them? Who heard but the heart?
The cheater of pride and every trail's tracker,
Escaper from the armies, hey, there's his whistling -
Knowledge of us, knowledge, till at last we do know him! Great
was the leaping of hearts, after their ice age.
The fountains burst up towards heaven, till,
Falling back, their tears were like leaves of a tree.
Day broods on all this beneath sun and cloud,
And Night through the cells of her wide-branching brain -
How quiet they are, and she breathing freely
Over Flower Meadow Field and Flower Field -
Keeps a grip on their object, the fields full of folk.
Surely these things must come. What hour will it be
That the outlaw comes, the hunter, the claimant to the breach,
That the Exiled King cometh, and the rushes part in his way?
Translation by Tony Conran
Waldo Williams, 1956
Next: 21.34
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