(Orpheus (Maquette I) by Barbara Hepworth, 1956)
(for Margriet Boleij)
Where does the muse come from? Not from Bacchus in my case. I suck inspiration from music and tune the strings correctly so that in chanting I tell the truth.
It doesn’t pay to strum carelessly, better to play a heart’s harpsichord intentionally. The voice of an instrument responds to a poem as words are set side by side with string music.
Then comes a measure of silence when the poet is a bronze Orpheus spreading his wings to fly across centuries with a poem to sing which is beyond the hearing of man.
‘Proffes y bardd III’
© copyright text and translation Mary Burdett-Jones 2022