Giles Watson's poetry and prose
Love Pangs
Love Pangs
Poen Serch
Your sleek shape and symmetry
Rob my sleep and sanity:
Pale I am to look upon,
Lost for words and woebegone.
Must you keep me here to brood
On your empty platitudes,
Little fibs? I fret and frown,
Doubt, desire, and fall down.
You flatter me, in your keeping
Like a caged thing, cold, weeping,
My tongue dumb, deprived of skill,
Stuttering to please your will.
Kill me outright if you can –
Better than deprive a man
Of sanity. Girl, you mock
And make me reel with sick shock.
White as chalk, your chiselled face
Saps my colour, sucks the grace
From words whispered to my jewel:
Soft she shines but ever cruel.
Girl who grieves beside my bed,
Your love-curse will leave me dead.
A lark I am, snared in lime,
Struggling to escape the slime,
Adhering more each flutter:
Every faking word you utter
Transfixes me, saps my luck,
Leaves me smeared, entwined and stuck
To the twig, piteous sight,
The more I aspire to flight.
The fool climbs, and thinks him free
The higher he ascends the tree
Closer to the leafy crown:
He has further to fall down.
I am the outlaw, once bold,
Bound to swing from some scaffold,
Languishing inside a cell
Awaiting sentence: bliss or hell.
I am a lamb: bleating shape
Behind a wolf with no escape,
Following with trust too blind
To plumb the deceiver’s mind.
Lost to love, my ardour bounds
Like Maelgwn’s staglorn hounds.
Before early morning light
Dafydd shall be killed outright.
You think I jest, Golden One?
Love lies dead and I am gone.
Source material: Attributed to Dafydd ap Gwilym, paraphrased by Giles Watson. All three manuscripts of this poem are anonymous, but it is in Dafydd’s style. Close similarities between some lines of this poem and others of contemporary style may suggest that this is a pastiche, but it is certainly not incompatible with the overall picture of the rise and decline of Dafydd’s love for Morfudd. The poem follows literary convention by listing a string of metaphors – some more extended than others – for the sufferings of a lover. The most striking of these refers to the barbaric practice of smearing twigs with ‘lime’ derived from mistletoe berries in order to trap songbirds by gluing them to the bark. The more a bird struggles when trapped in lime, the more its feet and feathers are entangled. Bird-liming appears to have been quite common in the mediaeval period when wild birds – even ones as small as larks – were a freely available source of protein, and unfortunately, it is one of those “traditions” that continues to this day, albeit more covertly. Maelgwn Gwynedd was a 6th century king of Gwynedd, and there appears to have been an oral tradition involving his hounds.
Love Pangs
Love Pangs
Poen Serch
Your sleek shape and symmetry
Rob my sleep and sanity:
Pale I am to look upon,
Lost for words and woebegone.
Must you keep me here to brood
On your empty platitudes,
Little fibs? I fret and frown,
Doubt, desire, and fall down.
You flatter me, in your keeping
Like a caged thing, cold, weeping,
My tongue dumb, deprived of skill,
Stuttering to please your will.
Kill me outright if you can –
Better than deprive a man
Of sanity. Girl, you mock
And make me reel with sick shock.
White as chalk, your chiselled face
Saps my colour, sucks the grace
From words whispered to my jewel:
Soft she shines but ever cruel.
Girl who grieves beside my bed,
Your love-curse will leave me dead.
A lark I am, snared in lime,
Struggling to escape the slime,
Adhering more each flutter:
Every faking word you utter
Transfixes me, saps my luck,
Leaves me smeared, entwined and stuck
To the twig, piteous sight,
The more I aspire to flight.
The fool climbs, and thinks him free
The higher he ascends the tree
Closer to the leafy crown:
He has further to fall down.
I am the outlaw, once bold,
Bound to swing from some scaffold,
Languishing inside a cell
Awaiting sentence: bliss or hell.
I am a lamb: bleating shape
Behind a wolf with no escape,
Following with trust too blind
To plumb the deceiver’s mind.
Lost to love, my ardour bounds
Like Maelgwn’s staglorn hounds.
Before early morning light
Dafydd shall be killed outright.
You think I jest, Golden One?
Love lies dead and I am gone.
Source material: Attributed to Dafydd ap Gwilym, paraphrased by Giles Watson. All three manuscripts of this poem are anonymous, but it is in Dafydd’s style. Close similarities between some lines of this poem and others of contemporary style may suggest that this is a pastiche, but it is certainly not incompatible with the overall picture of the rise and decline of Dafydd’s love for Morfudd. The poem follows literary convention by listing a string of metaphors – some more extended than others – for the sufferings of a lover. The most striking of these refers to the barbaric practice of smearing twigs with ‘lime’ derived from mistletoe berries in order to trap songbirds by gluing them to the bark. The more a bird struggles when trapped in lime, the more its feet and feathers are entangled. Bird-liming appears to have been quite common in the mediaeval period when wild birds – even ones as small as larks – were a freely available source of protein, and unfortunately, it is one of those “traditions” that continues to this day, albeit more covertly. Maelgwn Gwynedd was a 6th century king of Gwynedd, and there appears to have been an oral tradition involving his hounds.