occupying new territory year and place of composition systematically noted at the end of every poem. It is not
soeasy to locate the poems contained within the ‘War’ section inPont y Caniedydd
and relate them to a specific time and place. Llywelyn-Williams’s review of Jon
Silkin’s study of First World War poetry,Out of Battle, is of interest in this context:
‘It’s not so much the social backgrounds or even the cultural stimulus that matters.
In the last resort, the poems that come out of the battle must be judged as poetry like
any other poems for the imaginative quality of their testimony and for the lasting
significance of their achievement.’^43 In the war poems contained within his second
book of poems, Llywelyn-Williams appears to be distancing himself somewhat from
temporary situations, especially in his most mature compositions—although some
of them had been written during or immediately after the War. After all, eleven
years separated the end of the War and the date of publication ofPont y Caniedydd.
Together, the 1942 and 1956 volumes offer the best of both worlds: on the one
hand, the ‘immediacy of expression’ demanded by the intensity of the experience
that he referred to whilst discussing the English war poets of 1914–18; on the other
hand, the ‘more considered interpretation of the war’ which he identified in the
responses of Herbert Read and David Jones.^44
The ‘War’ section opens with ‘In Night Battle’, a short poem containing two
stanzas and reminiscent, both metrically and thematically, of ‘Y Blotyn Du’
composed by Hedd Wyn, the soldier-poet killed during the First World War.^45
The relationship between Hedd Wyn and Llywelyn-Williams is confirmed in the
second stanza which, by referring to ‘garw waedd y lleiddiad’ (‘the harsh cry of the
killer’), brings to mind ‘gwaedd y bechgyn’ (literally, ‘the cry of the lads’) from
Hedd Wyn’s ‘Rhyfel’ (‘War’), the Welsh poem relating to the First World War
most often alluded to by subsequent writers.^46 The connection with previous Welsh
war poetry is strengthened further by the reference to ‘briwgig yn y baw’ (‘broken
flesh in the muck’) which reminds one of ‘A gwedy boregat briwgic’ (‘And after
morning’s fray, torn flesh’) from Taliesin’s graphic description of war dating back
(^43) Llywelyn-Williams, untitled review of Jon Silkin’sOut of Battle: The Poetry of the Great War,
Poetry Wales, 8/3 (Winter 1972), 102.
(^44) Ibid. 102 and 103.
(^45) Hedd Wyn’s ‘Y Blotyn Du’ is translated as ‘The Black Blot’ by Gillian Clarke in Elfyn and
Rowlands (eds.),Bloodaxe Book of Modern Welsh Poetry, 67.
(^46) Llywelyn-Williams, ‘In Night Battle’, trans. Clancy, inLight in the Gloom, 133. Gillian Clarke’s
translation of Hedd Wyn’s ‘Rhyfel’ (‘War’) inThe Bloodaxe Book of Modern Welsh Poetry, 67, is
rather unsatisfactory: it misleadingly translates the two contrasting nouns ‘gwaedd’ (‘cry’) and ‘gwaed’
(‘blood’) in the final couplet as synonyms (‘blood’). D. Tecwyn Lloyd’s earlier translation is quoted in
Gerwyn Wiliams, ‘The Literature of the First World War’, in Dafydd Johnston (ed.),AGuidetoWelsh
Literature c.1900–1996(Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1998), 27; and Alan Llwyd provides an
alternative translation in David Lister, ‘Wales awaits poetic justice’,Independent on Sunday,13Mar.
- The claim regarding the allusions to the poem is substantiated in my survey of Welsh poetry
regarding the First World War: Gerwyn Wiliams,Y Rhwyg: Arolwg o Farddoniaeth Gymraeg ynghylch
y Rhyfel Byd Cyntaf(Llandysul: Gwasg Gomer, 1993), 158.