Lavernock
Moor and sea, skylark’s song
ascending through the wind’s demesnes,
we too standing listening
as we’d listened formerly.
What wealth remains, then, after
the journey’s adversities?
Moor and sea, skylark’s song
descending from the wind’s demesnes.
Translated by Harry Gilonis
Lavernock
Gwaun y môr, cân ehedydd
yn esgyn drwy libart y gwynt,
ninnau’n sefyll i wrando
fel y gwrandawem gynt.
Be’ sy’n aros, pa gyfoeth,
wedi helbulon ein hynt?
Gwaun y môr, cân ehedydd
yn disgyn o libart y gwynt.
This week, the English translation of a lyric by the many-sided writer, politician and Welsh-language activist Saunders Lewis (1893-1985) is a reminder, as each new year is a reminder, of the cyclical nature of time.
The poem’s narrative itself is shaped by the arc of return. The first stanza, impressionistically structured, reveals that the speaker and companion have come back to a place (Lavernock) which they have visited, perhaps more than once, in a previous period of their lives: “standing listening / as we’d listened formerly.” Repetition of the experience suggests they might potentially be able to share the landscape’s seeming timelessness.
The adverb of the fourth line is a pun in English, and that differently spelled word, formally, quietly nuances the reading of formerly. It may subliminally enable us to register the decorum of tone, the restraint of any self-indulgent nostalgia.
Another shape in the flow-chart of the poem is the ascent and descent of the skylark’s song, mirroring the movement of the bird. A slightly slower-moving and longer line records the ascent of the lark as it rises gradually higher and higher in the first stanza: there’s a quicker pulse and, sometimes, a gentle tumbling movement in the second.
Translator Harry Gilonis’s choice of vocabulary interlaces the richly abstract and the sparely descriptive. The freight carried by words such as “demesnes”, “adversities” and even “wealth” is social as well as linguistic. Their plenitude implies limitation, in contrast with the plain monosyllables, “wind”, “moor” and “sky”, which proclaim the expansive and archetypal.
A sentimental reader might expect the sentimental answer to the question, “What wealth remains, then, after / the journey’s adversities?” The unexpected answer, returning us to the two opening lines, refutes the easy gesture (“our love remains, naturally!”) and recharges the crux of the question, the meaning of “wealth”.
The descent to earth of the larksong occurs without drama, indeed with inevitability. Chiasmus creates an impression of seclusion and safety, an assumption that Lavernock remains, and will remain, with or without human witness. The continuity of the moor, the skylark’s song, the wind and the sea is unquestioned. To this extent, Lewis’s vision is Romantic.
A later generation, ours, is not so certain, and evocations of natural beauty may remind us of equally “natural” human predation, and cast a shadow over the poem. As we attune to the close listening and tactility of this poem and its translation we’re reminded that such qualities are integral to the well-examined life.
The first wireless signal, transmitted from Lavernock Point in Morse code by Marconi and his assistant included the words, Can you hear me? The art of listening is taught also by the questions heard in poems.
I am grateful to the copyright holder, Siwan Jones, for permission to feature Lavernock, and to the University of Wales Press for putting me in touch with her.
