Llym awel 3, improvisations.
The third stanza contrasts the atmospheric tumult of winter with the motionless, perhaps frozen, lake and the lifeless stillness of the remains of vegetation around its shore and in the woods. The complex sounds and rhythms of the first line give way to the stark alliteration and simple rhymes of the second and third lines.
The overwhelming impression is of a stripped hollowness, everything destroyed by the storm. The key is “cold bed” conjuring a flat, unwelcoming expanse of coldness. All the emotion of the narrator is summed up in those two words.
Oer guely, lluch rac brythuch gaeaw;
Crin calew, caun truch;
Kedic awel, coed im bluch.
“Cold bed, the lake in winter’s tumult;
Withered stalk, broken reed;
Violent wind, the trees stripped bare.”
—
For now
It is, surely, a cold cauldron-
This seething winter sky
Within the mute
And broken vessels
Of the earth;
Hollow, rounded,
Iron still.
Held
The grey lake,
The naked wood
Stripped bare
( the suitors of the sky
Voracious for space),
Ripped and opened
To uncaring wild heavens.
—
Cold bed this lake, death-still,
Through winter’s rage;
Withered is the stalk,
Broken the reed;
Violent the wind
That has stripped bare
The trees.
—
Broken withered still the soil,
Still cold the unmoving expanse of lake,
Cold as death.
That which bends is broken,
That which yeilds is bare.
Nothing moves
But winter’s endless roar.
—
Winter’s roar.
All, broken.
Slapped down, the lake,
Cold, folded, comfortless.
Hollow the woods,
Ripped of leaves.
What was, is remains.
Severed, the warmth
Of summer
—
