The last two lines are identical to my translation (which I provided the link to in my last comment here,) which I suppose is a good thing. As it happens, I'm not a native welsh speaeker either or even Welsh (or British,) I don't even know what my first language is actually. I just like Welsh and the culture that goes along with it. Only really spent a week in Wales.

Here's my quick and dirty version (by no means perfect either) for comparison Gentle songs I sing to you by night- Songs no mortal ear knows inklings of Nor a star that stares down from its height Nor the moon that swims the sky above. Songs that none except the very heart dreaming them can weep for as it hears, Songs on which none but the burning smart That devised them grows indulged in tears. Gentle songs I sing to you by night, In whose eyes I've felt my senses sink, You, from whose deep well, too low for light, My soul drank eternal longing's drink

Yes, I was so busy with the rhymes that I dropped the syntax! ;-) As for the "silent gear," I think it is more appropriate than trying to be direct; the "ether" thing didn't seem to work for me when I tried out the alternatives. Thanks for the hints, I'll amend the translation as more comments come in. Suggestions are welcome. Best regards, Ralf

Kylie and jason, actually.

Dear PeRsIaN^StAr, Welcome to PoemeRanker! And thank you for joining us just so you could inform me of the important new developments in AIDS and AIDS related research. Yours is the first comment on this poeme that I have read carefully, and without prejudice, and I'd like to take this opportunity to say that what I read chilled me to the bone. I had no idea AIDS was such a serious disease, nor that it could affect any one of us - not just homo lords or ethnics. I now realise how deeply ignorant my poeme is, and how it only serves to increase the number of people who die from AIDS. But the worst thing about this poeme isn't the fact that it makes AIDS more difficult to cure. Nor is it the fact that it makes some people laugh at AIDS against their will. It's the fact that it makes me feel guilty. For that, I thank you.

Cultural annihilation and commodification is worse than simply displaying the scars. The past shouldn't be sanitised and made safe. Reading this again, though, I think mainly that I'd been reading too much R. S. Thomas. I think that R. S., for all his faults (his oversimplistic hatred of English language culture, the hideously patronising Iago Prytherch poems), was perhaps the greatest poet to come out of Wales in the twentieth century (in English, at any rate, in Welsh I'd have to suggest Gwenallt). But his influence hasn't really been healthy, because it has fostered this sense of isolation and a nationalism based on historical doom. (See Dafydd Elis Thomas in Poetry Wales sometime in the 1970s). As it happens, I'm English, and English is my first language. But my father is Welsh, and I've just spent three years in Swansea studying for a PhD in the field of Welsh Writing in English (on the poet Harri Webb). I've been learning Welsh for that time only.

Don't you mean 'insightful'?

I've never read much Hedd Wyn. If anything, the title of my poem could refer to Glyn Jones' novel 'Times Like These'. What I have read is in translation; my grasp of Welsh isn't strong enough (yet, I am still learning) to understand poetry, or, rather, I feel I can understand the words only on a very literal level without picking up the cultural baggage they carry. Gillian Clarke renders the final verse of 'Rhyfel' as Like old songs they have left behind, We have hanged our harps on the trees again. The blood of boys is on the wind, Their blood is mingled with the rain. Which I suppose is a fairly good description of what appears to be the current state of the world.

Thanks - Took me some time to get the measure & pace right. Morgenstern is tricky, but beautiful. Hope it comes across in English.