For the Fallen by Richard Caddel

13x21 cm, 44 pages, 250 gsm green Strata card cover, hand sewn with green twist.

Cover illustration is a detail from a photograph by Richard Caddel.

ISBN 1 903090 22 9

See below for author's note and extract.

Click here for a review of For the Fallen by Mairéad Byrne.

Ordering Information

Author's Note:

For the Fallen is a reading of Aneirin's Y Gododdin, and is taken from A.O.H. Jarman's edition (1988). It is done in memory of my son Tom. The three sections reflect, roughly, three methods of "translation":

1-39 selective literal translation
40-75 loose phonic translation
76-100 free palimpsest rendering

It is unlikely that any of these approaches would satisfy a scholar of Old Welsh.

Richard Caddel

from For the Fallen

I claim
in the
song
place
not
from
doorway
one
earth
poetry is now parted

in
of
shift
under
light
fleet on
blue
worked gold
shall not be
between
shall
song
field
than
quicker
than
friend was
wrong
in what land

went
breathless
shattered
as many
not retreat
cut
floor
before
but one

wearing a
swoop
that was
not set
before
the land
neither
no-one
against

wearing a brooch
amber
in return for
down
Northern
planning
would be shattered

he gainsaid his room in the house front
defies odds common and odds even
anyways around - rifle-certain
who'd ever a road in lower elfin
everywhere folded and moor grey tarnished

he gangwayed for room in a nice town
worth more in a hunters wired wing
eased aloft nor rang clay to finish
adders-hog far and not ragged other
everywhere folded and moor grey tarnished

disengaged in a room rag drying aloft
canny big he grew and hurried me gaff
going on and on with meaning rid way off
against fooldog with heart enough
anything folded my bonny moorhen

men cormorant in atheist cunning
win faith amid faith earthen
O ancient hand me down
handcuffed cum ruinous
O golly gosh going round
like thunder
so long Dario my
rag runaway thinning

making a music out of language
making a moon
red air flame under stars
yesterdays filled with singing
yesterdays text of today
unreal // distinguish
can words make grief
so good // finding
naming one unchanging and changed

O gathered in blue aether
destroyed // in thin air
// a lost language
a power play // paratactic
I away in laughing
truly truth runs the lawns
run good with none better
thrill drunk with each letter

a good thing // growing
to be done by morning
crawl amidst gorse and law
growing growing enough
I miss him much
run in his words
in new wood shoots
in Great High Wood
catching breath to be anew
catching air // catching dew