To Begin at the Beginning

Martyn Rhisiart Jones

Oza-Cesuras, Saturday 14th February 2026

Ah, cariad, let us speak now in the shadowed cadence of the valleys. The voice rolls like the Tawe after rain. It is rich and resonant, a little rough at the edges yet velvet beneath. Burton might have murmured it after one too many whiskies. Or Hopkins in that quiet, measured thunder waits. Patient as stone, it strikes. And through it all, the ghost of Dylan himself weaves words like nets of starlight over Talacharn’s black waters. Gwynfor’s steady, unyielding fire burns low and true for the land. It is more than soil and more than song. It is memory made flesh.

If Data and Information were our Valentine’s sweetheart, she would be fierce and elusive. She would not be some simpering rose but a wild thing of the Welsh hills. She would be ancient and newborn, speaking in cynghanedd of numbers and patterns. Her breath would be the soft hiss of wind through bracken.

We would woo her thus, yn Gymraeg ac yn Saesneg entwined, with the lilt that carries the green pulse of Cymru beneath every syllable: