(for Richard Burdett)
What does it matter if a poem is sad? Should one give voice to rock, to the iron heart of the earth? –
err in attributing a storm of feeling to wind and tears to a flood of water?
The earth is not mute. By playing broken reeds the wind teaches humanity the sense of music
– painting ideas in sound, colouring the imagination intensely and velvety.
What then makes me write poetry when a poem is monotone? If I draw the lines, will you build the
house? The hope is that soliloquy becomes dialogue.
But if the sky greys and terrifies and my poem is just an echo stone . . .
‘Proffes y Bardd I’
© copyright text and translation Mary Burdett-Jones 2022