Mantis 18 (Spring 2020)
Translations

Book of Taliesin

translated from 14th-century Welsh by Katherine Robinson


Excerpted from “Angar Kyfundawt”

Gogwn a trefnawr
Rwg Nef a llawr
Pan astein aduant
Pan ergyr diuant
Pan lewych aryant...
Pan dygynnu nos,
Py datweir yssyd
Yn eur lliant
Ny wyr neb pan
Rudir y bron huan,
Lliw yn erkynan;
Neut anhawr y dwyn,
Tant telyn py gwyn;
Coc, py gwyn py gan,
Py geidw y didan.

Excerpted from “The Hostile Confederacy”

I know why hollowness echoes,
why annihilation is so sudden,
why silver gleams,
why dark waters flood in
gorges and streams.
I know the place from which nights fall.
I know what transformation
will be retrieved out of the golden ocean.
But no one knows
why the sun’s breast reddens, a blaze
of clear, bright colour,
or what a song of praise
is made from; no one knows
what the harp string
grieves for, what the cuckoos grieve for,
or why they sing,
or what guards that singing.


KATHERINE ROBINSON is a PhD candidate at Cambridge University. She studies the influence of early Welsh literature on Ted Hughes’s poetry, with a particular focus on Charlotte Guest’s translation of The Mabinogion. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in The London Magazine, Kenyon Review, The Hudson Review, Poetry Wales, and elsewhere. She has written essays for Ploughshares; Ted Hughes, Nature and Culture (Palgrave, 2018); and The Poetry Foundation.