We will remember them.

Fe’u Cofiwn.

Wilfred Owen was one of the greatest war poets of the First World War. Tragically, he was killed in action 4 November 1918 just days before the Armistice that ended the war came into effect at 11am on the 11^th November 1918. He was 25.

Roedd Wilfred Owen yn un o feirdd rhyfel mwyaf y Rhyfel Byd Cyntaf.  Yn drist, fe’i lladdwyd ar faes y gad ar 4 Tachwedd 1918 dyddiau yn unig cyn y Cadoediad a ddaeth â’r rhyfel i ben ddod i rym am 11 o’r gloch ar 11^eg Tachwedd 1918. Roedd yn 25 oed.

Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? 

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds. 

Futility

Move him into the sun -
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds, -
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,
Full-nerved - still warm - too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
- O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?

Alun Lewis was a poet of World War 2 and widely considered to be the most remarkable writer of that conflict. Born and raised in Cwmaman near Aberdare he died on active service in Burma aged just 28.

Roedd Alun Lewis yn fardd o’r Ail Ryfel Byd ac fe ystyrir mai ef oedd llenor mwyaf nodedig y rhyfel hwnnw.  Wedi ei eni a’i fagu yng Nghwmaman, yn ymyl Aberdâr bu farw tra’n gwasanaethu yn Burma ac yntau ond yn 28 oed.

All Day It Has Rained

All day it has rained, and we on the edge of the moors
Have sprawled in our bell-tents, moody and dull as boors,
Groundsheets and blankets spread on the muddy ground
And from the first grey wakening we have found

No refuge from the skirmishing fine rain
And the wind that made the canvas heave and flap
And the taut wet guy-ropes ravel out and snap,
All day the rain has glided, wave and mist and dream,
Drenching the gorse and heather, a gossamer stream
Too light to stir the acorns that suddenly
Snatched from their cups by the wild south-westerly
Pattered against the tent and our upturned dreaming faces.
And we stretched out, unbuttoning our braces,
Smoking a Woodbine, darning dirty socks,
Reading the Sunday papers – I saw a fox
And mentioned it in the note I scribbled home;

And we talked of girls and dropping bombs on Rome,
And thought of the quiet dead and the loud celebrities
Exhorting us to slaughter, and the herded refugees;
-Yet thought softly, morosely of them, and as indifferently
As of ourselves or those whom we
For years have loved, and will again
Tomorrow maybe love; but now it is the rain
Possesses us entirely, the twilight and the rain.

And I can remember nothing dearer or more to my heart
Than the children I watched in the woods on Saturday
Shaking down burning chestnuts for the schoolyard’s merry play
Or the shaggy patient dog who followed me
By Sheet and Steep and up the wooded scree
To the Shoulder o’ Mutton where Edward Thomas brooded long
On death and beauty – till a bullet stopped his song.

Postscript for Gwenno

If I should go away,
Beloved, do not say
'He has forgotten me'.
For you abide, 
A singing rib within my dreaming side;
You always stay.
And in the mad tormented valley
Where blood and hunger rally
And Death the wild beast is uncaught, untamed,
Our soul withstands the terror
And has its quiet honour
Among the glittering stars your voices named.