This week a strange yet tender poem by the Welsh poet Bobi Jones (see also week 287), about the way we respond to newborn babies even if they can sometimes arrive a little the worse for wear, and developing in a surprisingly literal sense the idea of ‘worming their way into one’s heart’. In a wider sense it can be seen as being about how our instinct of care and compassion for the vulnerable and helpless can redeem the troubled soul, and as such it reflects Jones’s Christian preoccupations, though of course such an instinct is by no means the prerogative of one religion, or indeed of religion at all.

The translation that follows is my own.

Y Bychan Newydd-eni

‘Mae dy wallt di’n tenau, a’th wyneb
    Yn grych, a’th gorff yn wyw.
Oedd dy swrnai’n faith? Ai blin y daith
Nes dy heneiddio wrth dreiglo
    O ddninas Duw?

‘Ble’ wyt ti’n myned, yr hen ŵr ifanc,
    Yr hen ŵr ifanca’n fyw?’
‘Rwy’n mynd i dwrian fel mwydyn
Mewn tamaid o bridd cochlaid
    A thorri twll bach ynndo i’r byw.’

‘Pa bridd ydyw hwnnw, yr hen ŵr ifanc,
    Yr hen ŵr ifanca’n fyw?’
‘Dy galon di, gyfaill. Dyna un twll
A fynnais, er llawned o falais.
    A’r fan yna caf fyw.’

‘Beth wnei di am y surni, ’r hen ŵr ifanc
    Yr hen ŵr ifanca’n fyw?’
Sylwi dim arno. Taflu blodau drosto
A chyrlio’n smotyn cryno
    Fel eli mewn briw.’

Bobi Jones

The Little Newborn

‘Your hair so fine, your wrinkled face,
   Your body weak and wan.
Was your journey long? Did it weary you
To age you so as you came your way
   From the citadel of God?

’Where are you going, my young old man,
    My youngest old man alive?’
‘I am going to burrow my way within
As a worm that burrows into red soil
   Then tunnel back out into life.’

‘What soil is that, my young old man,
   My youngest old man alive?’
‘Your heart, my friend. To open that,
For all its sorrow, was my desire.
   It is there that I shall live.’

‘But what will you do with the grief you find
    My youngest old man above ground?’
‘Pay it no heed. Strew it with flowers
And curl up tight in my little spot
   Like salve upon a wound’.