CURLEW

A song alive in memory, though long unheard

Ripples across the years to present the past:

The moorland landscape of Mynydd Bach,

Llyn Eiddwen with water lobelia growing

Through the shallows of the lake and the song

Of the curlew bubbling up to crescendo

Over the cotton grass on the bog on the far side

Where a ruined tower, a folly, sinks into the mire.

All this brought back in vivid re-call

But not so clear as the haunting call

Which would wake the dead and lull the living to sleep

As a woven strand in the song of Rhiannon’s Birds.

So past, present and future meet

In a song that is never forgotten, always heard.

~*~

“I want the Birds of Rhiannon, they that wake the dead and lull the living to sleep, to entertain me that night.”

Ysbaddaden Pencawr from Culhwch and Olwen

More about Llyn Eiddwen HERE