The Ice

THE ICE

Y Rhew

 

Shuddering beside the wall,

Teeth aquake, compelled to crawl,

Rimed with ice amid the gale –

Night to make a grown man quail

With neshness – not unknown

To me this winter walk, blown

And lonely! But how I crave

The woman coloured like wave-

Foam who hides behind this wall

And has the courtesy to call:

 

“By great God, are you a man?

Endure the cold! Prove you can!”

 

“I was baptised, by light of day,

A mortal man, but now stray

By night-time, my poise a sham!

Girl, I don’t know what I am!”

 

Saying thus, I fear I fell

On a sheet of ice, pell-mell –

Oh! It was a fateful lapse! –

Water closed on my collapse,

And as I began to flail,

Ice enclosed me like plate-mail.

Sure you heard – you had no choice –

My distant, pathetic voice!

I was enmeshed, because of you,

A fly in a web of blue,

Writhing on a leaden floor,

Locked behind a mirrored door,

Slipping in a sluice of muck.

Slithering, I cried, “Oh luck,

Confound you! Alas, my plight

Is worse here than on the height,

Grim indeed the wound that sears

Pierced by these gleaming spears:

Harrow blades! Each one impales

With the wrath of rusty nails:

Icicles so cruel and fierce,

Wind-whittled so to pierce

Human flesh: fell spikes of dread,

Meat-cleaving blades of lead,

Razor sharp to make me swoon,

Slivered by a sickle moon,

And I am skewered on a spit,

Broiled in bubbles, ground in grit,

Half-severed with one slice!

Love, I am at war with ice!”

 

More fool me, to walk impaled

By that thistle-sharpened gale,

Inviting chilblains! No boot

Is proof against the ice. My foot

A welt of hot, tingling blood,

Water-wizened in the flood!

A gentleman lost in a trice

Beneath an avalanche of ice!

Perhaps they rescued me, but then

I’ll never be the same again:

I’ve turned feeble, short of breath,

Iced and withered half to death.

Scorned by ice, a sharp sliver

Fatal as a raging river.

Lime that clings and chills within;

Glue that grabs and bites the skin.

 

My love, coloured like the snow

Can just forget it! I know

That there are better climes in life:

I’ll seek myself a warmer wife.

Give me sun: it will suffice

To set me free and melt this ice!

 

Source material: Attributed to Dafydd ap Gwilym, paraphrased by Giles Watson. Based on the text available at www.dafyddapgwilym.net. This poem is in the fabliau tradition: the reader is invited to laugh at the poet’s misfortunes as he undergoes an assault on his dignity in his pursuit of love. Many of Dafydd’s lighter poems (‘The Goose Shed’ is another example) are influenced by this tradition.

 

Done