A Satire on the Poet's Beard

A SATIRE ON THE POET’S BEARD

I’r Farf

 

Beard, was it you, in mid-snog

Who scared my girl, as if stung

By nettles, vile, noxious tares

That scraped her face, provoking tears?

Irish, fiendish, serried, fierce,

Whisker-stings defile her face.

Gazing into glass, I shrug,

My lip a bristling crop of shag!

 

How the thing is trimmed, who cares?

No rasping razor ever cures

This roughness, like the dried skin

Of shark or skate, fit to stun

Any girl. She spurns my lips,

And coyly lets liaison lapse.

Upon my chin, a teasel head:

She of fair hue won’t be healed

Of its chafing, like a rash

Spread the bristles, rank and harsh.

 

Any hag who knows me well

Could use my jaw for carding wool.

Burdock cannot grow more barbs:

My skin toothed for biting babes.

Hedgehogs, even, cannot match

My spiny muzzle. Armies march

With less defense. My grim lips

Goad my girl like holly tips.

 

Crackling-bristles! Sow’s behind!

A hedge of gorse I behold,

Gnarled enough to face a gale,

Stulp of furze to stab a girl,

Thistle-head, a scourge of pains

Piercing with a hundred pins,

Arrow-heads, bites of lice,

Scattered, shattered shards of ice.

“Beard too brash!” I hear her moan,

“Thicker than a horse’s mane!”

 

If other girls rebuff my suit,

I’ll rip it out, root by root.

 

- Iolo Goch, paraphrased by Giles Watson. A number of other Welsh poets wrote comical satires on their own beards. The reference to “teasel” is an extended metaphor, since teasel heads were still in use for carding wool until comparatively recently. The decision to berate the beard on its Irishness is Iolo's, and not my own.

 

To listen to a reading of this poem, see:

 

www.yourmic.com/videos/poetry-reading/405/a-satire-on-the...

 

Done