Cwyn y Gwynt (The Wind’s Lament) by John Morris-Jones

Sooner tears than sleep this midnight
Come into my eyes.
On my window the complaining
Tempest groans and sighs.

Grows the noise now of its weeping,
Sobbing to and fro –
On the glass the tears come hurtling
Of some wildest woe.

Why, O wind against my window,
Come you grief to prove?
Can it be your heart’s gone grieving
For its own lost love?

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By John Morris-Jones
(1864 – 1929)
translated by Tony Conran

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Additional information: Sir John Morris-Jones (17 October 1864 – 16 April 1929) was a Welsh grammarian, academic and Welsh-language poet. In 1889 Morris-Jones was appointed as a lecturer in Welsh at the University College of North Wales, Bangor (now Bangor University) where he was promoted to professor in 1895, a post he held until his death. Morris-Jones worked to standardise Welsh orthography.

Beneath is the original Welsh language version of the poem.

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Cwyn y Gwynt

Cwsg ni ddaw i’m hamrant heno,
Dagrau ddaw ynghynt.
Wrth fy ffenestr yn gwynfannus
Yr ochneidia’r gwynt.

Codi’i lais yn awr, ac wylo,
Beichio wylo mae;
Ar y grwydr yr hyrddia’i ddagrau
Yn ei wylltaf wae.

Pam y deui, wynt, i wylo
At fy ffenestr i?
Dywed im, a gollaist tithau
Un a’th garai di?

Roots by Dannie Abse

A man with no roots is lost

like the darkness in the forest.

Heart, my heart, what red voices cry

centuries of suffering in my flowing hands?

 

Love lasts as long as there are

two people, however silent the word.

Love, my love, how may I meet your eyes,

how may I meet the eyes that I will close?

 

Future, my future, on whose arms

will my hands be planted?

Love, my love, be assured your eyes

will live after you like children.

 

by Dannie Abse

from Early Poems

‘The Souls Of Those I Love…’ by Anna Akhmatova

The souls of those I love are on high stars.

How good that there is no-one left to lose

And one can weep. Tsarskoye Selo’s

Air was made to repeat songs.

 

By the river bank the silver willow

Touches the bright September waters.

Rising from the past, my shadow

Comes silently to meet me.

 

So many lyres, hung on branches, here,

But there seems a place even for my lyre.

And this shower, drenched with sun and rare,

Is consolation and good news.

 

by Анна Ахматова (Anna Akhmatova) (1921?)

from Седьмая книга (The Seventh Book)

translation by D. M. Thomas


Fun fact: Though the poem is dated as being written in the 1940s it is more likely it was written just after her husband Nikolay Stepanovich Gumilyov‘s execution in 1921.

9 March 1823 by Vasily Zhukovsky

You stood before me

so still and quiet.

Your gaze was languid

and full of feeling.

It summoned memories

of days so lovely…

It was the last

such day you gave me.

Now you have vanished,

a quiet angel;

your grave is peaceful,

as calm as Eden!

There rest all earthly

recollections,

There rest all holy

Thoughts of heaven.

 

Heavenly stars,

quiet night!

 

by Василий Андреевич Жуковский (Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky)

(1823)

translated by Boris Dralyuk


Fun fact: Ivan Bunin, the Nobel Prize winning Russian emigre author,  is related to him.

The Line Of The Horizon by Maria Petrovykh

It’s just how it is, it’s the way of the ages;

years pass away, and friends pass away

and you suddenly realize the world is changing

and the fire of your heart is fading away.

 

Once the horizon was sharp as a knife,

a clear frontier between different states,

but now low mist hangs over the earth –

and this gentle cloud is the mercy of fate.

 

Age, I suppose, with its losses and fears,

age that silently saps our strength,

has blurred with the mist of unspilt tears

that clear divide between life and death.

 

So many you loved are no longer with you,

yet you chat to them as you always did.

You forget they’re no longer among the living;

that clear frontier is now shrouded in mist.

 

The same sort of woodland, same sort of field –

you probably won’t even notice the day

you chance to wander across the border,

chatting to someone long passed away.

 

by Мария Сергеевна Петровых (Maria Sergeyevna Petrovykh)

(1957)

translated by Robert Chandler