Emyr Humphries 'Poet of the Old North'

EMYR HUMPHRIES.

Poet of the old north

(E bore duw Sadwrn cad fawr a fu -)

Saturday morning a great battle began

Blood shed as long as the day lasted

Their mouths were filled with earth

But his words were not wasted

It was more to him than a demographic swing

The barbarous thrust more than an ethnic threat

Covered with classroom notes his verbs

Are bloodstained faces.

Four hosts led by the Destroyer attacked from the east.

The warm kingdoms summoned their men, the training

feast

Was foregone. Out of the silence burst the voice of the

Blusterer

'Send your hostages forward

Send them dressed in the garments of peace

Call me Overlord call me master

And from this day our conflict shall cease.

..'

Unreproducible blunt repetitive rhymes

Like the breath in his lungs

Made short and immediate by danger

The last moment the culmination of times

Of postponement. The cold future hangs

In the air while the nation waits for the leaders' answer.

Owain son of Urien in the vanguard

Made the first reply. So proud of his descent

His voice was the first blow. 'There are no hostages

There will be none. Today or any day.'

Then his father spoke, Urien, Taliesin's master,

The great lord of the lakes, the leader of the host:

'They wish to meet us! They have proposals to discuss!

Make a fence of linked shields! Let us

Show them our faces over over a rim of steel! Let them

See spears level above our heads! Let us

Fall upon them and pick out his head

From their ranks as they tumble

In heaps before us.'

And there he pauses.

No account of the battle is given

Only the scene at nightfall

Before Llwyfain wood

Between the hills the site forgotten and the country lost

The corpses have stopped bleeding

But the gorged crows are dabed with blood.

What does 'armaf' mean?

Armaf arfaethu, paratoi cân?

- virumque cano - Push the letters about

Split the syntax, change the language

The voice of the poet fits

His cattle on the narrow bridge

Defy the passage of time

As the little scholar said

Old deaths are the latest

Take a year take a lifetime

To hammer out this song.