Pennar Davies
When I Was a Boy
When I was a boy there was a wondrous region
the other side of the mountain:
the sun livelier there, in its prime;
the moon gentler, its veil of enchantment
resting chastely on hill and dale;
the night like a sacrament,
the dawn like young love,
the afternoon like sliding on the Sea of Glass,
the evening like a respite after mowing;
the faces of ordinary folk like china dishes
and their voices like the soliloquy of countless waters
between the source and the sea,
and the people sons and daughters of old,
princes and countesses in the court;
and all the lines of nature, thought, society
and talent and will and sacrifice
and the saving and the wretchedness and the peace,
all the lines of venture, claim, compassion,
meeting at eye level there
in an unvanishing vanishing point
called Heaven:
and all on the other side of the mountain
in Merthyr, Troed-y-rhiw and Aver-fan
before I crossed the mountain
and I saw.
Welsh; trans. Joseph P. Clancy
Pennar Davies, Welsh, trans. Joseph P. Clancy.