Telyn Mabon / The Harp of Maponos

Bum tant yn telyn
Lletrithawc naw blwydyn
-*-
I was a string in a harp
Enchanted for nine years

Taliesin : Kat Godeu

Nine years of enchantment the awen sang,

Rang from the string of the harp I became

Or which became me as I heeded the song

The harp, the harpist and the harp-string as one.

The Awen was on me, within me, around me

The sounds of Rhiannon’s birds singing out clear

The flow of the music and the flowing of time

Entwined and was still yet they moved through the air.

Time and not-time were fused in our song

Both World and Not-world keeping their part

The span of the days and the moons and the suns

Caught in the span of the strings of the harp.

It was Mabon who played then in the youth of the World

Though the music reached out, eternally young

Stretching forward in time to suns yet untold

The god, the awenydd and the harp as one.

~*~

 Notes made singly and in combination, ring out into the world from the inspired fingers of Maponos who plays on the Harp of Time.

Time – the music of the world – striking the chords that measure the days of limited lives. And alongside this : Not-Time, where  nine years pass in an instant as the God plays the Harp,  and the sound stretches unheard into Eternity as each note is played.

So there is music. So there is silence. Between the two the God at the harp for nine years, though no time passes,  as the God plays on and on ….

Was Taliesin enchanted? Or was he the Enchantment?

The God sits, plucking each string, bringing Time out of Not-Time.