Shut-winged fish, brown as mushroom,
The sweet, hedge-hurdling swifts, zoom
Over waterfalls of wind.
I salute all those lick-finned,
Dusky-bladed air-cutters.
Could you weave words as taut, sirs,
As those swifts’, great cywydd kings,
Swart basketry of swoopings?
*This poem is written in a metre called the traethodl, which means something like ‘delivery in rhyme’, I suppose. Each line has seven syllables and an accented final syllable rhymes with an unaccented. The ‘great cywydd-kings’ are the Welsh poets who wrote in the cywydd metre, following Dafydd ap Gwilym and his contemporaries, poets like Gruffydd Grug, Iolo Goch, Dafydd Nanmor, and so on. My poem has only eight lines, and my explanation takes longer than the poem! – Glyn Jones
Date: 1969
By: Glyn Jones (1905-1995)
