Inheritance

A translation of ETIFEDDIAETH by Gerallt Lloyd Owen

We had the keeping of a country,
a piece of land as witness 
to our claim on life.  

We had – generation to generation –
a nation, and breathed 
our very own history.  

We had a language, though not by choice,
for it had already quickened in the soil 
its strength restless on the mountains.  

We turned our land to chimneys of fire, 
planted trees and solid pylons 
where it was not deluged. 
We turned our nation to nurture 
strangers without a thought for its history,
drifters like sea-wrack with no hold on the turn of the tide. 

We turned the language of the ages 
to the language of our disgrace.  
Consider a proverb which contains this truth: 
Progress is measured by a nation’s shame  
and the peace it promotes is it’s death.