Menna Elfyn
The Theology of Hair
I came before you with simple plaits,
a long-legged maid, a lass who couldn't care less
that her sheaves were all bound up with ribbons,
for wasn't the hair on my head like the hair which foamed
over the hard pew-back with a rustle like rivers,
drops shivering as it arced and fell
over the communion shelf, and I ached to touch it,
to twine it in patterns, to fill up that hour by reaching out to a girlish wonder.
It made me think of summers full of imaginary ponies
galloping after me, taking my breath away
as I cantered over the hills, and the banditti-like bangs
outlawed their way over my cheeks. There were arguments,
but I loved my hair's energy. Golden moss
like maidenhair stroked my skin, longing to escape
and sometimes, obediently, regally, I would tease
a kiss-curl like honeysuckle over one cheek.
Why that fate for it? To this day, youth loves
the life-force of hair, the way it kinks a little.
Was it the secret forests in it which fuddled the ones above?
They called it a dark thicket.
And yet, O Holy Spirit, didn't you give us the gift
of praising it, this headful of hair. This full crown, these tresses,
to be prettily dressed? What harm could there be
in this crinkly, kissable harvest? They imagined it
tumbling over naked backs, charging desire. But cropping
—a full stop to lust's sentence? Locks tied back from breasts.
To leash passion, there was a hair-wreck.
I washed up on a deserted and sensuous strand.
--from Secrets
Welsh; trans. Elin ap Hywel
Menna Elfyn, Welsh, trans. Elin ap Hywel, Eucalyptus - Detholiad o Gerddi / Selected Poems 1978-1994, Gomer Press, 1995.