Menna Elfyn

Cyplau

Language: welsh

Translations: english (Couplings), lithuanian (Jungtys)

Cyplau

Murddyn yw byw. Ninnau, mynnwn ei drwsio
at ddiddosrwydd. Gyda’n dwylo ei saernio

at frig adeilad. Nes clymu o dano nenbren,
a wylia holl fynd a dod ein byw heb wybren.

Dau rwymyn cam. Naddwyd hwy’n gyfan,
yn gyffion cytun, yn drawstiau llyfn a llydan.

Cyfarfod dau. Dyna’r grefft a fagwn wrth amgau
dros ffrâm dau gnawd gan asio’r llyfnus gyplau

sydd weithiau’n enfysu’n un. Ar ogwydd uwch yr oerfyd,
geubrennau’n chwiffio serch. Yna’n stond am ennyd.

A’r to mor elwig ar dro yn gwichian cariad
wrth ddwrdio’r gwyfyn draw. I aros tro ei gennad.

Menna Elfyn

photo © Marian Delyth

* 1952, near Swansea, Wales, United Kingdom
lives in: Llandysul, Wales, United Kingdom

Menna Elfyn is an award-winning poet and playwright. She has published fourteen collections of poetry, children’s novels, libretti for UK and US composers as well as plays for television and radio. Her latest collection Bondo (Bloodaxe Books) was published in 2017 and will be published in Italian in 2020. Her work has been translated into over 20 languages, her bilingual volume Murmur (Bloodaxe Books), was selected in autumn 2012 as Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation, the first ever book in Welsh/English to be chosen. In 2009, she won an International Award for her contribution to Poetry in Sardinia.

photo © Marian Delyth

Her biography of the Welsh poet Eluned Phillips was published by Gomer and the English translation Absolute Optimist (Honno) in 2018. Cennad (Barddas) a literary memoir was published in March 2018. She has written half a dozen tribute poems to RS as well as a commissioned libretto ‘Hymn to a Welshman’, with composer Pwyll ap Siôn. The harpist Elinor Bennett performed the work at a premiere in Portmeirion in 2001. In 2015 she wrote the libretto Gair ar Gnawd/ Word on Flesh with Pwyll ap Siôn, for Welsh National Opera. First commissioned as an oratorio and following its success, further commissioned as a full-scale opera and later televised with surtitles (Rondo).

She is Professor of Poetry, President of Wales PEN Cymru and has been a columnist with the ‘Western Mail’ since 1994.

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