| Y GOEDEN GRINOLÎN | THE CRINOLINE TREE | |
| Menna Elfyn | trans. Nigel Jenkins | |
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Dadwreiddio yw hanes rhyfeloedd. Bechgyn bochgoch ar aelwydydd, gloyw, yn heidio i dir estron. Ac ymysg yr holl ddadwreiddio, anghofiwn am y sigo syml ar golfenni'r plwy. Tocio clust, un plwc ar aelod, a dyna’i ddiwedd neu ei ddechreuad. A'r brigyn amddifad yn ysbail yn llaw’r hawliwr. Un prynhawn o Fai, ces fy nhywys i waelod gardd fy modryb, ac wele nid wylo coeden oedd yno. Un yn piffian chwerthin, â’i chorun tua'r awyr; cig ei dannedd yn weflog tua'r gwynt, yn binc crinolîn, ei bysedd yn binwydd mor feddal â hirflew ci'n heneiddio. 'Y gw  r ddaeth â hi nôl o'r rhyfel.' meddai, 'ac fe gydiodd yn berffaith.' O'r diffaith, un goeden rhwng dwy wlad yn croesffrwythlonni. Fel petai'n symbol fod gwreiddio dyn wrth ddynwared bysedd y Garddwr yn ddyfnach ei bridd, rywsut, na’r glas mewn dilead. |
Uprooting is at the heart of war: rose-cheeked lads from cheery hearths herded off to foreign lands. And in all the uprooting, the buds nipped, we seem to forget the sheer convulsion of the parish’s tree. One member plucked and that’s its end, or its beginning, the twig cast adrift as spoil in the despoiler’s hand. One May aftemoon, my aunt led me to the bottom of her garden, there to behold a tree not weeping so much as chuckling, her laughter sailing from crown to sky, the meat of her teeth wide to the wind, crinoline pink, her pine-green fingers as soft as the hairs of an ageing dog. 'The men brought her back from the war,' she said, 'like a dream, out of all that waste, she took two countries, one tree.' Cross-fertilisation: earthly echo of the Gardener’s touch, symbolic in kind of man’s enrootings making somehow for deeper soil than blue, cold, destructive steel.
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Copyright © Menna Elfyn 2001; Trans. Copyright © Nigel Jenkins 2001 - publ. Bloodaxe Books
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