PROPHECY IN THE MORNING
Tra mor, tra Brython,
Haf ny byd hinon;
Bythawt breu breyryon
Ae deubyd o gwanfret,
Vch o vor, vch o vynyd,
Vch o vor, ynyal ebryn,
Coet, maes, tyno a bryn.
Small gods consume lesser gods
To become great gods.
Simple ideas coalesce
To plot the downfall of worlds.
Ye prophetic poets who starve in corners.
Ye warrior kings who walk on mothers’ sons.
Ye ocean depths. Ye wild autumn skies.
Ye ultimate icy silences. Ye forests singing.
Words that lack mouths fall impotent.
Memories that lack accuracy
Become stories for the bored and enervated.
Today, like every day,
Is the last day of this bright world.
Today, like every day,
Will become ashes glowing in the cooling evening.
What will you do to sustain?
What will you do to glorify?
What will you do, O foolish ones,
To mimic eternity, and fail?
I am Taliesin and I am bitter dust.
Bright browed and grown from circumstance.
A seed swallowed by a great mother, hatched and thrown adrift.
If my words bite hard, they are to waken you.
Your footsteps are poison
Wherever you tread.
How shall reparation be made?
Pop arawt heb erglywaw – nebawt
O vynawe pop mehyn.
Yt vi brithret a lliaws – gyniret
A gofut amwehyn:
Dialeu trwy hoyw gredeu bresswyl.
—
The words in Welsh are from The Prophecies of Taliesin:
At the beginning:
As long as there is sea, as long as there are Britons,
There will be no fine weather in the summer;
Feeble will be the lords who come to them
Through deceiving the weak.
An attack from the sea, an attack from the mountain,
An attack from the sea, the uninhabited region in tumult,
The wood, the field, the hollow and the hill.
and at the end:
Every supplication going completely unheeded
By the lord of every place.
There shall be turmoil and tumult in the host,
And spreading tribulation:
Acts of vengeance mixed with constancy of fair promises.
—
Prophecies accumulate their own veracity.
They become the origin and end point of themselves.
Boulders thrown into a stream,
Turbulence upstream and down.
—
simonhlilly 