I have no longing for the distant past – it died one afternoon in December in a war cemetery of hop-poles, when light lost its brightness and the fingers of apple trees pointed to the wet sunset.
I feel a longing in the sea, on mountains, in the gentleness of the breeze and in the softness of rain for what will come in the course of time but live in the joy of the present, knowing that I can touch people in the heart through my poem.
‘Hiraeth’
© copyright text and translation Mary Burdett-Jones 2023