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Tuesday 8 December 2009

Abercuawg: translation of a Welsh poem of the 9th or 10th century -- by Captain Ned






on a hilltop     idle
there would be comfort
but I do not stir
from this desolation

there's no grazing
bitter winds
scour the summer
of all but brightness

I am stiff     I am old
I cannot get about
no retinue aids me
but let the cuckoo sing

Cuawg's cuckoo sings
on flowery branches
I hear its mocking
but I'll not ask for respite

Cuawg's cuckoo sings
on flowery branches
what pain would come
hearing it no more

once I heard the cuckoo sing
and I forsook my shield
left it sleeping by a tree
     the cuckoo's song
     the cuckoo's song
left it sleeping by a tree

a tall and rustling oak
the home of jostling birds
there I left my shield
     and the cuckoo
     wounds me still

the moon shines
my mind is raw
I do not sleep

I look to the hill-top
white against the dark
it is cold

I do not deny
I am sick tonight

the birds are raucous
old age should bring rest
leaves fall
     from the ash tree
in youth I was loved

broad wave in the estuary
the wave is broad and bright
ebbing wave in the estuary
the wave ebbs

on Edrywy Hill
the birds are raucous
while in waste-lands
the dogs bark

now it is May
when all the land is fair
this is the young men's time
this is the soldiers' time

but I am old
my wounds sear me
I do not go to battle
I am old

rain soaks the pathway
the moon brings affliction to my heart
a far wave ebbs
sickness has chosen me

bring me my mead-bowl
bring me my ale
the cattle are sheltered
shield me from the rain

I speak now of treachery
of deceit while cups were raised
of an evil deed
  done when men were glad

but atonement has come
and now the warrior is ragged
trading a little in exchange for much
  there's no reward for the wretched

branches are high      oak and ash
cow-parsley's sweet
the wave laughs
God's not merciful in this world


my sighs betray my sickness
good is not permitted me
hated here and in heaven

the wave strikes the shingle
the sea flays the shore
I look to the hill-top
     and the cuckoo sings


.

53 comments:

Zephirine said...

Wow, you can see why this poem has lasted a thousand years! Such regret and bitterness, so powerfully contrasted with the beauty of the landscape and the cuckoo's song.

I can't tell if it's a good translation, Captain, but it reads beautifully. I especially like:
and the cuckoo/wounds me still

Meltonian said...

The stanza form very effectively mimics the intermittent train of thought and reminiscence of an old warrior. On first reading it seemed a little random, but subsequent readings fill in the connections. Impressive.

Anonymous said...

Hi Captain,

I love this, have read it four times since it was posted earlier. Such abandonment and pain.

I'm familiar with this poem only by reputation, but I'm ashamed to say that I'm unfamiliar with it in any translation (unless, of course, and it's very possible, that I've read it before and forgotten it since). I'm assuming it's anonymous? Or is there an authorship attributed to it, no matter if surrounded in some controversy?

What's the form in the original, captain? Anyways, wonderful work.

Jack Brae

offsideintahiti said...

They don't make them like that anymore.

Thanks, Captain.

ExitBarnadine said...

Masterful work, Ned.

'My mind is raw'.

FOr some unaccoutable reason, this reminds me of Dylan's Highlands; the insistence on some remote but heartfelt injury, a curmudgeonly resentment of time - the landscape indifferent to mortality.

I went to an open-mic night at the Poetry Cafe last night with a friend from South Africa. It was rather fun and I'm considering going again, possibly reading something. A far more jovial and inclusive room than I'd expected.

Zephirine said...

ExitB, as one who has never been to a live poetry event, do tell me: do they all read in that funny way that always ends on the same note? Even C A Duffy seems to do it, though only moderately. (It's a bit like the way all the X Factor contestants sing the same - no, Zeph, don't go there...) And did poets do that before Dylan Thomas or is it a kind of ghastly legacy he left us?

ExitBarnadine said...

It was very diverse, actually. In terms of quality as well as style. From an eighteen-year-old model who found his way into the cafe when visiting his agency, an older woman who sang a song about xmas trees, several deadpan and mordant observers of minutiae and one emphatic American slam-poet. But a lot of laughs and a very funny MC, so not as po-faced or sniffy as I'd imagined.

I enjoyed it.

Meltonian said...

You can see Billy Mills reading on YouTube. Fairly low-key bar the shouting, and no oratorical trickery. Quite a barnet on him.

Duffy I find nearly unintelligible. It's as though she's talking to herself.

Zephirine said...

This would be the place? Sounds good.

Zephirine said...

Billy Mills doesn't do the 'poetry' voice, but here's an example of what I mean - these are probably really good poems, but I can't take them in, because they're being intoned with every single line ending on E flat or whatever that note is. Not meaning to be rude about this pote, she's entitled to read her stuff how she likes, I just find it really difficult.

ExitBarnadine said...

That's the one. I've been there before to meet friends. I almost got kicked out once, giving the lie to their claim to be "busy and vibrant". Yeah, only of you whisper. But I'd never been to a reading.

I think I'm going to try to get to another open-mic night before xmas.

ExitBarnadine said...

re the vid; I got as far as 'the face of light on water'. My face hitting the keypad woke me up.

It's like English church singing, isn't it? A nervous drone. It's just not done to be seen to care or make a noise or give a performance. She should have handed it over to David Lee Roth.

Meltonian said...

Niall O'Sullivan, who often appears there, is a top of the range poet. Mrs M, who has a near-TyrannosaurusAlan attitude to the art, picked up a book of his I'd left lying around and read at least half of it without flinching. Which is remarkable.

Zephirine said...

ExB, my theory is that it's a much diluted imitation of Dylan Thomas's declamatory readings:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XG1B_7r4y8 that has somehow become What Poetry Ought to Sound Like.

But I could be quite wrong, maybe it goes back earlier than that.

MM, must check out this O'Sullivan geezer.

mimi said...

Spooky to find this at Other Stuff just at the time that I am re-reading The Mabinogion and trying to make some sense of clan mythology.

Also on a day when I have been called "filthy Welsh" by a Scottish neighbour.

I was tempted to respond with "Robbie Burns? Call him a poet - read Dylan Thomas" but kept silent as there are some arguments not worth having.

offsideintahiti said...

Did he mean "filthy wench", maybe? Some Scottish accents can be hard to catch.

Just kidding, Mimi.

Bye everyone, see you next year. Take care.

mimi said...

Offie: this was the first time in nearly 10 years that I really got racially abused. The man was so rude.
However, I am Welsh and a wench, so rise above such abuse.

Have spent this evening making my case at Pseuds for our Manx boy Mark.

Also completed a pome that Zeph may or may not feel is good enough for the Salon.

Zephirine said...

Captain Ned, every time I re-read this poem I like it more.

Is anything known about the original author?

Captain Ned said...

Thanks for the kind words, everyone. Insofar as it's a translation, it's pretty free - I've moved phrases and stanzas around, cut a lot out, and given a free verse rendering rather than stick to the englyn form. I studied the Welsh poem at university and made a literal translation of it; when I was browsing through some of the stuff I'd saved on my computer recently, I thought I might try my hand at it in a looser way. If anyone wants to look at a more faithful version, I'd recommend the one to be found in Joseph P. Clancy's 'The Earliest Welsh Poetry' (1970), which has a number of other excellent translations.

The stanzas are themselves part of a wider sequence called 'The Songs of Llywarch the Old'; glimpses of a narrative are afforded, though what relationship the Abercuawg section bears to the rest is unclear. It used to be thought that these verses were surviving punctuations of a lost prose epic, but that theory is no longer in vogue (mainly because there's not a scrap of evidence for it). Still, it's probably a good bet that there would have been an assumed familiarity on the part of intended audiences with the basic elements of the 'story', which goes a long way to accounting for the fragmentary nature of the narrative. Another factor is that the stanzas are likely to vary somewhat in date and authorship.

I've only once attended a live poetry reading; the experience was enough to disincline me from repeating the ordeal. However, the performer in question was very much the STUDENT POET, and that dread beast may not entirely representative. I like the lack of fuss Billy brings to his YouTube moment of glory, although the poem itself competes for one's attention with its maker's resplendently hirsute display.

Zephirine said...

Thanks for the info, Captain. It does feel as if the audience would be expected to know what the treachery and the evil deed were, but on the other hand these could be the memories of any old warrior.

henrymoon said...

Highly impressive, Captain!

Thomas (linked above) reminds me of a new parish priest who arrived at my church when I was a small choirboy and who insisted on half-singing every reading in his attempt at a BBC eccent, beginning each line high on the declamatory scale and ending as low as possible, with grim theatrical finality, punctuated by heads hitting the pew prayerbook rail. I can see how this intoning produces a hypnotic effect, which can awaken near-oneiric perception and sensitivity, a little like early Leonard Cohen, perhaps. But 'performance' has moved on since the YouTube generation banalized such things. I'd be tempted to delegate.

Zephirine said...

The Student Poet now is more likely to be a a Slam Poet in which case it seems the intonation and especially the hand gestures have to be kind of rap lite.

I dunno. Does poetry have to put on a special voice?

freep said...

I liked this very much, Cap'n, put me in mind of some Anglo Saxon palaver. What it tells me is that you can only say it in some sort of chant. I've tried it aloud, and one thing you can't do is read it as if it were prose. In other words, you have to ham it up somehow - it's a self dramatisation, after all. Not sure how to deliver the cuckoo lines. I used to go to poetry readings, but often got put off by so many readings of fairly banal free verse as if it were important and musical. This, though, has the music which the reader wants to give it. It's not something which, Zeph, needs 'to be read in the same way that ends on the same note'
A really good C20 poem which stands reading aloud, perhaps suggesting a voice like this one, is Sorley MacLean's Hallaig....
I don't think there's any prescription that tells you how it might be read, and I can imagine it being overdone. Maybe in all cases of good pomes we ought to let it be spoken silently first.

Meltonian said...

Have you ever read, freep?

I expected that more people would be attendees at readings. It's been a few years for me, but geography is a good excuse. Having said that, I couldn't be fagged to drive for 30 minutes to hear Motion read this summer.

Tony Harrison I thought was very good when I saw him in the early 80s.

freep said...

I suppose my theory, MM, is that actors are better at reading pomes than poets. I've heard Tony Harrison read, and thought he was good. I heard lots at Morden Tower readings in Newcastle. Tom Paulin was no great shakes; Norman MacCaig RIP was brilliant. I think it's a good idea for other people read your poems; with the attendant risk that it might make you stop writing for ever.

Zephirine said...

freep, I don't think any poem needs to be read with every line ending on the same note:)

I've now tried reading this one out loud, and I liked the way it came out if read quite prosily and low-key but slowly, with plenty of pauses, to be a reflective 'inner' monologue.

I suspect pace is often the problem, poets are perhaps afraid to read slowly in case people stop listening so they fall into an unbroken drone of words, while an actor would know the value of silence.

freep said...

I listened to that link you gave, zeph - Linda Hodge - and it was pretty dire. I could imagine someone reading the Cap'ns poem in such a dreary voice, which would kill it stone dead. Pace is one key, for sure, or I'd prefer to call it rhythm; rhythm we might compare to the artist's use of light. But above all it's the tone of voice that would be wrong - as if the poem were a symphony being played in a version for the trombone. The short lines and disjointed images of Abercuawg need a strong sense of the tragic and the empty, and a voice to do that needs actorial skills. Low-key is right, but with a range of sound to cope with the ups and downs of the images, some bright, some dark. Ooooh that poetry reading made me squirm.

mimi said...

I went to hear Tony Harrison and it was great and I am really trying to remember whether I did hear Auden when I was very young, or whether I just remember my mother telling me about it.

InvisibleJack said...

I frequently read my poetry in public, but the reality is that reading one's poetry out loud is a separate discipline than writing poetry. A lot of poets aren't too good at reading their work in public and that's the sad reality. Then there's the trap of style. HLM gives a good example of one particular trap with his mention of the priestly psalmist school of reading. This style was quite popular over here in Ireland about twenty years ago when the Catholic Church still had a hold of people's brains. That style of reading isn't so common these days simply because less people are attending church services and therefore exposure to that kind of intonation has been eroded.

The hand-waving rap style that has also been mentioned isn't so prevelant at poetry readings as it was, say, about three years ago. That way of reading is now seen as a bit absurd in some ways as it's such a stylized form of delivery.

Speaking of the trap of stylized forms of reading, the Irish poet Paul Durcan is a good example. About ten years ago he was quite exhilerating to watch. But now he's disappeared so far up his own arse that he's become simply a caricature of himself and his readings of late can be quite cringe-inducing.

At the end of the day there are good readers and there are bad. The only way to get good, though, is to go out there and read. But having half-decent poetry to read from is more than half the secret.

Jack Brae

Meltonian said...

Have you been to the place where Billy Mills was reading, Jack?

On the whole I think I would prefer to hear actors reading rather than poets, unless the poets have made an effort to learn the techniques: speaking verse is a skill, after all. Over thirty years ago someone recommended me to the manager of an arts centre to read an elaborate sequence of drug-addled sonnets I'd shown him. Of course he was taking the piss, but the sublime egotism of youth blinded me at the time. My preparation consisted of a bottle of Pernod, and when my turn came I could barely speak: what emerged from my mouth wasn't quite human. Reaction was muted, though generally hostile, not because of the drunkeness (which wasn't uncommon) or the embarrassingly poor verse (ditto), but because of my evident lack of preparation and respect for the audience. Something Duffy might think about.

Pinkerbell said...

I saw Duffy reading a few months back and quite enjoyed it because of her humour and connection with the audience. I couldn't work out whether she'd had one too many, had a speech impediment or just a tendency to mumble. I felt I'd worked just as hard as her in the end, maybe that's why I felt a connection?

file said...

fine fare on the Captain's table, this is great, translated poems are always impressive, funny things but this is very effective, as it stands, not least cos it wears its Welshness so well.

re: readings, Billy Collins is another one whose delivery slips from relaxed to catatonic on occasion. Finding folk who are good at sitting quietly for hours on end fiddling with words is one thing, finding same folk who can then stand up in front of people and recite said work well ad nauseum is another thing entirely. Different personality set imo (rare to find both together).

InvisibleJack said...

Hi MM,

My youngest son recently stole the speakers from my computer here and ran off to college with them, so I'm unable to check out any of the sound files lately. One of these days I'll get a new pair of speakers, but at the moment I can't be arsed. Anyway, that was a long-winded way of saying that I didn't check out those sound links so I'm not sure where Billy Mills was reading. He did read recently at the Whitehouse pub in Limerick (yep, I've read there myself) so it might be that that's the venue on that sound link.

Anyways, I've seen Billy Mills read a few times and he's a fairly indifferent performer of his own work. (Sorry Billy, I know you're probably reading this, but your readings are a bit on the sloppy side at times.) But then again, it'd be interesting to get Billy's own take on this. It may well be that he doesn't like to read. Some poets actually hate to read and only do it as a necessary evil. As well as that, in Billy's defense, his poetry is very much of a school that pertains best to the page.

I personally would disagree concerning the generally expressed view here that actors are the best equipped to read poetry. In my experience that isn't quite true, unless the actor understands meter and rhythm. But then again, on the evidence of some poetry, there are many poets who don't understand it either.

The fact is, many poets on the reading circuits are fairly dismal readers. Although, again in disagreement with some here, in the past two years I've seen both Carol Anne Duffy and Andrew Motion read and they were both exceptional performers, and I'm an extremely critical judge when it comes to performance. Duffy's selection from her own poetry, however, was superior to Motion's. Duffy is better at guaging an audience in my opinion, and I last saw her read fairly recently, the very week before she was elected to the Laureateship in fact. (The reading was at an Eigse in Newcastlewest, in County Limerick.)

One thing about Duffy. She's, as we say in Kerry, a tough char. She projects a kind of sardonic and superior distance between herself and her audience when she reads, and the result is that you're paradoxically drawn in by her mildly repellent superiority. I think that's the strange connectedness that Pinkerbell experienced. But, and here's the caveat, you have to be there to appreciate it. Perhaps that's why those who see her via video or audio files find her dull. I think she's far better live. But then again, that's a common phenomenon with poetry readings - recorded readings often seem pretentious and are awful to watch, whereas the live audience at the same event sometimes have a more positive memory.

Jack Brae

munni said...

"my mind is raw"

so is mine, but this is beautiful.

Being able to read poetry aloud is a skill that rarely coincides, it seems, with being a poet. Ironic and unfortunate.

Mimi, I'm certain you are a lovely clean Welsh wench, not a filthy one at all. (my sister and I believe in reclaiming racial slurs by using them upon each other with relish - we've been told to stop doing it in front of other relatives though).

Meltonian said...

Yes, it was the White House Billy Mills was reading at, Jack, and I think you're right to say that much of his work needs to be read rather than heard. Typography, for one thing, is an important factor.

I rather wish I'd gone to see Motion now. I have heard Duffy in the flesh, at a prizegiving over twenty years ago (she won: I didn't). Admittedly she only read her winning poem, but part-way through Mrs M turned to me and whispered 'Why is she mumbling like that?'. It had already crossed my mind that she might have had a couple. I didn't hear her again for years, and when I did it was clear she hadn't had a couple: that's just how she talks. I don't know why she doesn't do something about it.

Zephirine said...

Well, it doesn't seem to have held her back.

Meltonian said...

True. I knew there was a flaw in my argument somewhere.

InvisibleJack said...

Another reason that Billy's poetry speaks best from the page is that the narrative is subverted, (a major tenet, I would argue, of his poetic practice and philosophy), and such subversion makes things difficult for an audience at a reading. It's easier when hearing something if the mind has a coherent narrative to hold on to.

A very good example of Billy's subverted narrative can be found in the later section of his recent "Lares / Manes: Collected Poems" - in the two-poem sequence "Two Rivers: Mulcair / Liffey".

I should add, however, that some Irish poetry audiences, particularly those at the Whitehouse in Limerick and O'Bheal in Cork, are extremely open to experimentalist poetry of all kinds.

Jack Brae

Pinkerbell said...

Yes, that's it, a sort of fond superiority.

I have had the pleasure also of hearing Joolz Denby read, who is referred to as the "Queen of spoken word", but I don't know where the accolade came from, whether she said it herself, or other people have labelled her as such.

She was very good and I think the art seems to be helped by having musical ability and timing and like someone here has said, not being afraid of the silence between words, and in leaving the audience to ponder the words before moving on.

Some poems were read to music and she sells "albums" of her work. It seems that she sees reading poetry as a separate skill to writing poetry. Her poems don't look that brilliant written down, but read out are extremely effective. I can see how this works the other way too. Surely not all poetry is meant to be read aloud? Maybe not all of it is meant to be written either?

freep said...

Thanks for the reminder, pinkerbell:
'Maybe not all of it is meant to be written either?'
When people like Bishop Percy, Walter Scott and, indeed, the Brothers Grimm imprisoned folk poems, ballads, songs and stories on the printed page, and made their names and fortunes through the process, who can say what was lost? Sure, we gained, as consumers of historical curiosities, but we wrongly expect to be able to have everything recorded. Which is why, on balance, in my old age, I get more pleasure from hearing a crow complaining on the sea shore than I do from burrowing into a book of poetry. I do like the fact that the little body of Anglo-saxon poetry that has survived can be contained in a single not very thick book. The notion that the occupants of the 7th - 10th centuries enjoyed verbalising in ways that are quite lost is a wonder. We do not have to remember everything, praise the Maker.

file said...

this debate would be a good context for an anthology: poems written to be recited, chanted, sung, memorized/those written to be read quietly/ those written to be seen/those that will stand for all and those that shouldn't have been written at all(lol Pinks, I've done a few of those myself!)/

even though I've been blessedly un-beset with calls for me to worry the general public with a 'live' reading, I often 'perform' poems as I'm cobbling them together (and in different ways: Peter O'Toole, Pavarotti, Emily Dickinson, Peter Lorre, platform announcer, James Brown etc.). The Mrs.file would like to know if I'm alone in this

file said...

freep, are you keeping a list of those things best not remembered?

InvisibleJack said...

File,

I always read my work out loud as I write it, and then once it's written I again read it out loud over and over because I find that that helps to catch all the glitches far more effectivley than a silent reading. I also carry new poems around in my pockets for days, reading them out loud (but usually to myself in quiet places -I don't actually accost people on the streets and force them to listen). It's aprt of my personal writing process. Even the pieces posted onto blogs are changed through this process. I look upon blog-posting as an early draft.

With regard to Freep's comments, I find myself a bit divided. With regard to my own poems though, I would certainly say that some work better on the page than they do read out loud, and some that are not so hot on the page can often make good performance pieces. There are some poems that you know instinctively just won't work with an audience in a live setting (they might be too complex to catch with the ear) but which work perfectly well in the written medium. It all depends

Mmmm, folk poems, ballads etc "imprisoned on the page". I'm not so sure freep. You could just as easily say that the page liberated them from obscurity, could you not? Or am I misunderstanding you?

I hope Billy, if you're there, that you weren't too offended by my comments concerning your reading style. I realise now that, without the wonderful and charming nuance of my speaking voice, that the bare words on that post look very damning. For which I apologise.

Jack Brae

freep said...

file; I compromise. On little bits of paper in my pockets I jot down things I want to remember, like creosote and toilet paper, and below them I write an idea for a poem, and when I have bought the creosote I throw the paper away including the scribbled idea for the poem. But the idea is still in my head, while the paper is on the fire or in the bin.
Sorry, Jack, I was being a little provocative, but I'm quite serious about the notion that there is an actual loss when the oral thing is committed to paper. Publication, the making public of a, perhaps, original idea, is not an unadulterated good. When the folklorists went around collecting those songs and ballads that had never before been printed, they were ensuring that they would never have to be remembered again - i=the stuff would always be in the library. And now, it will always be retrievable digitalised data. Think CCTV. #
But you are right that print has liberated many from obscurity, and this medium will rescue even more. What we will be liberated from is a most fascinating conundrum and, as the great O'Brien said, an insoluble pancake.

Meltonian said...

I would rather know the poems from the page before attending a reading (where possible), Jack, since I lose the thread within a few lines otherwise. I could probably follow something with a strong narrative line, but it would have to be John Gilpin strength.

On Lares/Manes, thanks for the pointer on the narrative subversion, which has given me something to think about. Mulcair I thought initially domestic, moving into wider considerations of what the world is and isn't. Liffey I found fairly straightforward, which usually means I've totally failed to understand it. 'on the bypass' - have you noticed how often driving appears in the Mills oeuvre? He's the Clarkson of poetry.

file said...

that's encouraging, thanks Jack! Some poems can mean different things depending on how they're presented, perhaps that's why poets (and Dylan and Cohen) often revert to flatness (Zeph's mono-note) at readings. To me, this can also be a sign of sincerity though, actors may be able to read poems better but any dramatization (other than the poets) is basically a falsification/interpretation. And in the bars and café's of most poetry readings there's the footie/hockey/news and the catering to contend with (beer, cheesy croissants, cappuccino machine...), I imagine it must be hard to launch with gusto into verse in that environment (or worse; emphasise the exact pitch and length of the silence between "all hope" and "dissolves", for example).

freep, I never fail to be impressed by the multi-functionality of creosote. Aren't humans (as a race) Hoarders by nature? Especially when it comes to historical artefacts. (We could save a lot of time if we just took care of our things ourselves, rather than leaving them lying around for others to try to find and sort out centuries later.) That said, compiling lists of things to forget and merging them with lists of things to remember, losing that and reciting results by memory; sounds like some sort of poetry to me.

billymills said...

Jack, I know I'm not a great performer; it's a fact that pleases me greatly ;-)

Most Irish poets, including the women, go in for what I call the "priest's voice", pompous, self-important, bringing the "good news", used to being deferred to. I don't want any part of that.

I like file's comment; to me there is no better singer than Dylan, sloppy as he is. The voise should be there to deliver the words, not hide them.

Ned, this is a magnificent translation. Thanks for sharing.

Zephirine said...

Interesting discussion, this. Maybe in the New Year I'll put up some examples of Readings We Like - nominations to me by email please, if you have any.

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Unknown said...

A wonderful poem! I wish I could find it in the original Welsh.

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