Skip to content

Tag: Welsh verse forms

The Threshing Floor: englyn cyrch

Published on March 6, 2017

Give an answer, if you can,
where doubts plague each fighting man
weighting healthy action down
and distracting from good plans;

where blind fear is laying waste
to fresh brick and mortar paste
shielding helpless, sick and poor,
from the pike and bonfire’s baste;

where to live alone is brave,
which makes heroes from mere knaves
who seek glory for all time
in some lines from poet slaves;

where faith falters, and belief
in war’s leaders and great chiefs
leads to slaughter fresh new lambs
who learn firsthand of despair;

where if love is found at all,
it kneels at the wailing wall
and drags on through endless hours
hoping honor breaks its fall;

’til what lives to fight once more,
taught to win despite the score,
lays its weapons down and dies,
chaff dropped on the threshing floor.

06 MAR 2017

Leave a Comment

The New Idea: cywydd llosgyrnoch

Published on February 22, 2017

A new idea finds the mind
and digs itself a home behind
what it finds still living there,
rewiring lights and such to suit,
requiring sometimes a reboot.
Then it takes root, without care

for walls and beams it wrests aside,
for contents lost when seams collide.
It takes great pride in breaking
the models of forgotten thought,
old lesson plans no longer taught,
like recipes not worth making.

And in that space it will expand,
imagining the world it plans
not build on sand, but on stone;
its buttresses unshakeable,
its hold on us, unbreakable,
its taproot makes a great throne.

But that illusion cannot last;
in birth, idea’s death is cast.
How fast new seeds demand light
and will destroy without regret
the noble root, and will upset
tradition’s sense of what is right.

And so the tragic, fragile mind
consists of what is left behind
and what is blind and just made.
There, in that pause between the sigh
of death and birth’s great squall and cry,
none deny they are afraid.

22 FEB 2017

Leave a Comment

The Subtle Taste: cywydd deuair fyrion

Published on February 21, 2017

What use worry
with its hurry –
finding danger
in fate’s finger,

and with fear’s gloss
opting for loss
instead of bliss?
Why choose to miss

life’s subtle tastes?
What a sad waste –
seeing devils
in time’s revels,

and in life, care,
not for what’s there
but hidden threats,
not happened yets;

with only death
chasing each breath,
filling days out
with crippling doubt.

21 FEB 2017

Leave a Comment

Shape the Now: cyrch a chwta

Published on February 17, 2017

It’s yesterday we cling to,
that we prefer to what’s new,
choosing safety, not what’s true:
life goes on, us with it too.
It has no rules; memories do,
and don’t shift the world and skew
the facts used to shape the Now,
which somehow is left to you.

17 FEB 2017

Leave a Comment

Random Theory: cyhydedd naw ban

Published on February 16, 2017

No bright, bleeding edge technology
can by itself inspire us to see
beyond the limitations that bind
us to solutions posed by old minds,
gurus and mentors with rigid ways,
and coaches still running ancient plays.

The revolution cannot be fought
using hackneyed strategy still taught
in broken and ineffective schools,
who at best offer us simple tools.
We need to seek beyond the hammer;
relearn to speak using new grammar.

But in the end, no shortcut or device
grants understanding of work, or price,
nor strips away a rigid mindset;
artificial means are not there yet.
What must be done requires human acts
that integrate ideas and facts,
creating blueprints for the future, now,
out of something unknown, new, somehow.

To that creation, our tools and toys
may add flash, bells, whistles, and some noise
as mere ways for focusing the brain.
Our duty to thinking must remain
so that the choices we weigh and rank
leave in their outcomes, ourselves to thank.

And revolution, if it then comes,
some fresh distribution of stale crumbs
amongst the cannon fodder still here?
How it will change the world is unclear.
The only certainty is still death;
the randomness of life is what’s left.

16 FEB 2017

Leave a Comment

Our Sum: clogyrnach

Published on February 10, 2017

What a world this one’s become:
to have begun both deaf and dumb,
then learn of singing,
the art of bringing
love winging;
see it come!

Who needs make-believe, I wonder,
when there’s rain, lightning and thunder
that illuminates,
feeds our dreams and fates,
tears our states
asunder.

What a world both past and now:
the evidence that we, somehow,
will someday arrive,
and may yet survive;
we’re a live,
precious bough.

Who would destroy the great balance
that gave to us this fighting chance
to mature and grow,
to be sure and know?
Such death slows
all life’s dance.

What a world this one’s become:
we trade love songs for battle drums,
spend our lives dying,
no longer trying;
denying
our parts’ sum.

10 FEB 2017

Leave a Comment

A Thing Survives: byr a thoddaid

Published on January 26, 2017

So: can a thing survive a fall,
then lift itself enough to crawl
from where it lands to some safe place, to heal
and hide its bruised, scarred face

until the foe that pushed it down
has doubt it ever was around,
then too late, as the counterstrike arrives,
regrets its choice to leave a thing alive?

26 JAN 2017

Leave a Comment