Lynx in a zoo
‘He’s lost it’, we sympathise as he
madly circles his lunatic cell
but we’re drawn back later to watch him:
six paces southwards,
turns like a tramcar
with flinty eyes sparking holocaust;
a sulky march, mute
in his angled world,
backwards, forwards, onward for ever …
We’ll pass the stagnant python – the sleepy
sheepish bears, slothful goats
and the half-hearted tiger, – a lizard
like a statue drowsing
and lions in endless, endless meetings,
run without a chairman,
and we will come back later to watch his
paws grasping, pulsing a constant beat,
tirelessly running through matted grass,
with head held high, stately Mandela,
entitled still, hunting forever his
domain in Combe d’Ire under deep snow,
his night heavy with hunger,
moon-whitened shivering lake,
he’s there on the hills and through the ford
free to follow the trails of his world
going, still going, always alive.
Lynx mewn sw
‘Mae ’di’i cholli hi’, yw pitïo
llawer o gylch ei gell loerig o
ond down yn ôl wedyn i’w wylio:
mynd i’r dde chwe cham,
yno troi fel tram
gyda fflam yn ei lygadau fflint;
martsh anniddig, mud
o fewn conglau’i fyd,
’nôl , ’mlaen o hyd, o hyd ar ei hynt …
Awn heibio’r beithon lonydd – yr eirth swrth
a swil, y geifr mynydd
diog a’r teigr diawydd, – madfall pren
â’i ben ar obennydd
a llewod mewn cyfarfodydd hirion,
hirion, heb gadeirydd,
a down yn ôl wedyn i wylio’i
bawennau’n dal, dal i bendilio,
yn rhedeg y ffèg heb ddiffygio,
yn benuchel, yn hen Fandela,
yn dal at hawl, dal ati i hela
a’i dir yn Combe d’Ire tan gnwd eira,
ei nos yn dew gan newyn,
golau lloer ar sigl y llyn,
yntau ar y rhiwiau a thrwy’r rhyd
yn rhydd i fynd ar drywydd ei fyd
yn mynd, dal i fynd, yn fyw o hyd.
©Myrddin ap Dafydd 2003, reproduced with the author’s permission
English adaptation ©Susan Walton 2010
This is one of two poems I chose to enter for The Times Stephen Spender Prize for poetry translation in 2010. It is from an award-winning collection by Myrddin ap Dafydd. This collection won the most prestigious prize for poetry – the Chair – at Wales’ National Eisteddfod in 2002.
I chose to adapt ‘Lynx mewn sw’ because it parallels my late father’s situation towards the end of his life. He was confined to a hospital bed with a panoramic view of northern Snowdonia. He’d been to nearly every peak he could see, but knew he’d never walk in the countryside again. His illness sometimes tricked his mind into thinking he was elsewhere. Sometimes he was back in the mountains.