From where did it roll in, the sea of light
over Weun Parc y Blawd and Parc y Blawd?
While I questioned so long in the shadows,
where had he been, the one always near?
Who, who was the marksman with his bolt of clarity?
The swift hunter in the field was the roller of that sea.
From above the glittering whistlers and the wise lapwings,
he brought me a great peace.
Gave me delight where there was
only delight of the sun singing light and warmth,
blooming gorse crackling in hedges,
rushes dreaming the blue sky.
Who is it who calls when imagination awakens?
Rise, walk, dance, and behold the universe!
Who is hidden in the syllables of words?
This happened on Weun Parc y Blawd and Parc y Blawd.
And when the great clouds were refugees and pilgrims,
red from the late sun of a stormy November—
ash and maple dividing the fields beneath—
the wind’s song was deep as absolute silence.
Who is it, in the midst of urge and rampage?
Who stands and gathers?
Witness for each witness, memory for each memory, life for each life,
quiet peacemaker for the troubled self.
Then the world arrived to stillness,
and on the two fields, his people walked,
and through them, between them, among them
the spirit rising from its wellspring, embracing all,
as with we few, laboring with pitchforks,
heaping haystacks on the heavy meadow.
We were knit so close:
the silent hunter had cast his net around us.
O, through ages of blood on grass and radiant grief—
what whistle could only the heart hear? Who was it?
Trickster for the arrogant, runner along every path.
Listen! He who escapes armies
whistles to the flock until we recognize him.
Great was the leaping heat of hearts after the deep freeze.
Fountains gushed toward heaven
and fell back, their tears like leaves from trees.
On this, the day meditates beneath sun and clouds,
and also the night through vast synapses of her brain—
how steadily, quietly she breathes
over Weun Parc y Blawd and Parc y Blawd,
holding tight the peopled fields.
Surely this will come, the hour
of the outlaw will come, the hunter will come,
the beggar at the gate will come,
and the Exiled King with rushes parting before him.
Translated from the Welsh by David Lloyd
Translator’s note: Damian Walford Davies writes in Cartographies of Culture that he sees this poem as “identifying the source of the sustaining vision underlying Williams’s moral and political outlook in the revelation of universal brotherhood he experienced as a teenager…in the gap between two fields in Carmarthenshire”—fields named Weun Parc y Blawd and Parc y Blawd.
Waldo Williams (1904–71) is described in The New Companion to the Literature of Wales as “the twentieth century’s most astonishingly original poet in the Welsh language.” A Quaker and a passionate advocate for Welsh language and culture, he believed in the sacred interconnectedness of all creation.
David Lloyd has published nine books, including three poetry collections, two story collections, and a novel. He received the Poetry Society of America’s Robert Winner Award and two Fulbright Awards. He directs the creative writing program at Le Moyne College.
Photo by Sebastian Herrmann on Unsplash
