T. H. Parry-Williams: "Barrenness" (From Welsh)

Barrenness
By T. H. Parry-Williams 

Translated by A.Z. Foreman

It was a treeless world of weather-swept
wilds in Snowdonia around my birth,
bare as if giants had forever kept
smoothing out every slanting slope of earth;
and as I grew up, through boyhood's amazing 
years in our upland home among my own,
those mountains' primal forms would press in, bracing
me till their barrenness became my bone.
And should something of me survive my end

without completely vanishing away

and be discovered by some heart-matched friend

by chance near Snowdon in the dusky day,
he'll see in it no image, no design,
just long-drawn barrenness' bleak outline.

Me reading the original:

A. Z. Foreman · "Moelni" by T. H. Parry Williams read in Welsh and in my English translation

The Original:

Moelni

Nid oedd ond llymder anial byd di-goed 

O gylch fy ngeni yn Eryri draw,

Fel petai’r cewri wedi bod erioed

Yn hir lyfnhau’r llechweddau ar bob llaw; 

A thros fy magu, drwy flynyddoedd syn 

Bachgendod yn ein cartref uchel ni, 

Ymwasgai henffurf y mynyddoedd hyn, 

Nes mynd o’u moelni i mewn i’m hanfod i. 

Ac os bydd peth o’m defnydd yn y byd 

Ar ôl yn rhywle heb ddiflannu’n llwyr,

A’i gael gan gyfaill o gyffelyb fryd

Ar siawns wrth odre’r Wyddfa ’mrig yr hwyr, 

Ni welir arno lun na chynllun chwaith, 

Dim ond amlinell lom y moelni maith