SPOILS OF ANNWN
Neb kyn noc ef nyt aeth idi –
Y’r gadwyn tromlas kywirwas ketwi
It is a soughing, is a sighing lament
a lament of oarstrokes, of labour
against a tidal fate, the rip-tides of honour,
of pride, of battle, of world’s collapsing.
It sings so with a heavy heart
the cracked glass of memory saying
all was lost, save us, and we returned lost:
the dark roads, the impenetrable fortresses,
the keening wind, the scent of snow and blood.
‘How many saints are there in the void?
May I not endure this sadness…’
And the roaring waves turning back
Drawn tight against the ripped sky
Banded, wheeled, armoured rings
And the horror of it is not even that darkness.
Inside these fortress rocks the lost echoed songs of the forever lost,
Transformed aching nothing twisted to silence
The thousands lost just trying, just looking,
The hinged doors screaming, the invisible worlds
Shuddering and refusing us their air, their shade.
Save seven, none came back.
Their air is not our air, their life and death not ours
To grasp at feathers and find fingers shredded to bone,
To look into eyes that look beyond days and nights.
And the ghosts of thought growing bold, and the doubts
That our good is not good, our right, a trespass unforgivable.
There was terrible beauty that cared nothing for us,
That would not let us rest or pass, terrible is such truth.
Unutterably shifted between worlds, gone, never returned.
Chaff words and book learning all shallow things
Now our eyes have been seared with countless strangenesses.
May I not endure this sadness.
—
simonhlilly 
Is that Welch? I just saw a series on Netflix taking place in Wales (“Hinterland”). I loved the setting with the grey changing skies and the sea. Thank you for the lovely words. Kenza.
Yes, medieval Welsh.
Wonderful!
Sustained and terrible beauty, Simon.
Thanks Bonnie. It is a mysterious piece in itself, The Spoils of Annwn, with many different interpretations of the striking imagery. When last I read it ( and I read it often) it was the sense of unutterable exhaustion and alienation with the everyday world that came through the rhythms and sounds.
Full of soul 😀
Thanks, Ogden.
Skilfully managed and sad.
Thanks Ben. I wonder if Carl Jung was familiar with this poem. I am sure he would have appreciated the edgy archetypes therein ( though old Sigmund would work himself into a scientific lather with all the penetrations and forbidden spaces….)
I think Jung came to find archetypes everywhere whereas Freud loved to view the world in a tightly boxed reductionistic model of his own devising due to his unconscious fear of life and consequent need for control.
Open and closed. Cheese and chalk.
Or was it the Archetypes found Jung?…..
A moot question indeed. 😀
Powerful. Your words about ‘the cracked glass of memory’ put me in mind of the walls of Caer Wydyr and its impenetrability. Most haunting to think of all those, all – not just Arthur’s warband, who didn’t come back.
It is, I think, easy to normalise the experience of the Otherness of the preChristian/ pre-modern world and how important the perceived actions in a life were to the destination after death. Our ideas of right and goodness are so rooted in Biblical aphorism, and comfortable urban numbness.