Song of a voiceless person to British Telecom

Ga’ i rif yng Nghaerdydd , os gwelwch…’

‘Speak up!’

‘GA I RIF YNG NGHAER-‘

‘Speak up- you’ll have to speak up’.


‘Speak up’ is, of course
The command to speak English.
I sentence myself to a lifetime
Of sentences that make no sense.
No pronunciation ,no annunciation,
Inflection. I am infected
With dumbness. I can neither lampoon,
Sing in tune; much less can I
Intone. My grace-notes
Are neither music nor mumble.
I am not heard at Evening Prayer
Nor at triumphal Matins,
Nor am I that voice in the dusk
That is husky but vibrant.

An impediment, then? No. No thick tongue,
No chip on my shoulder, a compulsion to please.
And if I am without speech
What of the fluency of my people?
We are mutes, Trappists,
Conspirators in a corner.
The usurper’s language pierces
To the very centre of our being,
A minister of darkness before whose tread
Our civility must give ground.
From the safety of my television
I see nations forced into a hole,
Possessors of nothing but their dispossession,
Mufflers over their mouths,
Their captive craft under curfew.
There is an injunction against their speech,
And I perceive it is Y GYMMRAEG that we share.

So the next time I am commanded
To ‘speak up’
Deferring to the courtesy
That is our convention,
With like courtesy I will require the operator
To ‘pipe down’;
And like ‘sounding bras’
I will suggest the superfluousness of barbed wire,
Since our language has berylled wares.
I will sing and make contact
In cynghanedd,as the small nations do,
A people in counterpoint
To the leit-motif, dominant
Though its pitch be,
Ending each time on the same
Obstinate monotone
With the same passionate concern
Though mortally muted our metrics.

‘A nawr a ga i-
y rhif yna yng Nghaerdydd’.


Translated from the Welsh by R.S Thomasy



Wales-The shapes she makes

I was defining her
On a clean slate,
Fleshing out her frontiers
Badgering her to her borders
In red ink;
When a foreign student said,
‘It’s like a pig running away’;
Laughing done with,
I believe her;
The northern snout
Hoofing it faster
Than her southern rump,
Fleeing her slaughterers.

She’s made of shapes, you know:

The slack old mouth, agape
Or the lazy, lolling arm,
Resting on its oars;
The jumper, of course,
Half-done,
Wrapped around a bit of wool and the needles,
Or else, she’s a pair of scissors
Ready to ribbon herself,
An adventurer’s double-hafted knife,
Or an earthen pitcher,
Hollow and cracked.

She’s polysyllabled pictures,
This inleted landmass
I swap with acquaintances
And with the foreigner
Who sees her for what she is:
Comically scattered
Who is,
On my life,
Like an unerring boomerang which wills
Wills
Its
Way
Back
To
My
Feet.


Translated by Elin ap Hywel



COUPLINGS

Life is a house in ruins. And we mean to fix it up
and make it snug. With our hands we knock it into shape

to the very top. Till beneath this we fasten a roofbeam
that will watch the coming and going of our skyless life,

two crooked segments. They are fitted together,
timbers in concord. Smooth beams, and wide.

Two in touch. That's the craft we nurture in folding
doubled flesh on a frame. Conjoining the smooth couplings

that sometimes arch into one. Aslant above a cold world,
hollow wood wafting passion. Then stock still for a time.

And how clear cut the roof, creaking love at times,
as it chides the worm to keep off and await its turn.

English translation by Joseph Clancy



ENGATES

A vida é uma casa em ruínas. E tencionamos arranjá-la
e torná-la cómoda. Com as nossas mãos moldamo-la

até ao cimo. Até que por baixo disto prendemos uma arcada
que assistirá às idas e vindas da nossa vida sem céu,

dois segmentos tortuosos. Eles são embutidos juntos,
madeiras e concórdia. Vigas suaves, e vastidão.

Dois em contacto. É essa a arte que alimentamos ao dobrar
carne dobrada numa moldura. Casando os suaves engates

que por vezes se curvam num só. Obliquos sobre um mundo frio,
bosque oco flutuando paixão. Então armazena-se por um tempo.

E quão nítido o telhado, chiando amor às vezes,
Enquanto repreende o verme que se afaste e espere a sua vez.

Tradução de Alexandra Bernardo a partir da tradução para inglês de Joseph Clancy





LET THE WORLD'S PEOPLE SHOUT

Have you noticed how time-free a person is
when approaching a new language?
Yes, you stumble over consonants,
postpone vowels,
encumbered with all the armour of your longing
for the conquest of expression.
And yes, your tongue is like
a baby bumping along on its bottom.

Well then, let each of the world's peoples learn
the excommunicated language of its neighbour,
yes, creep and crouch in corners,
lose sleep in messing it up,
since this is how tenses will be deleted.
The past will not come fluent on the tongue.
The language of today will stay. It will sue for peace,
pull down all the barbed-wire verbs.
The imperfect will never be so perfect
as when it ceases to exist.

And cleft, split, and rupture will be
made whole in the open mouth.
Each new learner will have the memory
of correcting constructions,
picking up one's bed, rectifying speech.

There will be no time for spreading hatred,
since the tribes will be overcome
by the riches of all the founding stones –

And through the babies in Babel
a yoke will be raised, a United Languages heal
in freeing oneself, freeing in sowing the seed.

English translation by Joseph Clancy



DEIXEM O POVO DO MUNDO GRITAR

Já reparaste quão livre de tempo uma pessoa é
ao abordar uma nova língua?
Sim, tropeças em consoantes,
adias vogais,
sobrecarregadas de toda a armadura do teu desejo
pela conquista da expressão.
E sim, a tua língua é como
um bebé movendo-se aos solavancos no seu fundo.

Nesse caso, deixa cada um dos povos do mundo aprender
a língua excomunicada do seu vizinho,
sim, rastejar e agachar-se em esquinas,
perder o sono em estragar tudo,
já que é assim que os tempos serão deletados.
O passado não virá fluente na língua.
A língua de hoje ficará. Requererá pela paz,
derrubará todos os verbosde arame farpado.
O imperfeito jamais será tão perfeito
como quando parar de existir.

E fissura, fenda e ruptura serão
tornadas num todo na boca aberta.
Cada novo aprendiz terá a recordação
de corrigir construções,
melhorar um leito, rectificando o discurso.

Não haverá tempo para espalhar ódio,
já que as tribos serão ultrapassadas
pelas riquezas de todas as pedras fundadoras –

E através dos bebés em Babel
será erguida uma cangalha, uma cura de Línguas Unidas
em auto libertação, libertação em espalhar a semente.

Tradução de Alexandra Bernardo a partir da tradução para inglês de Joseph Clancy