Giles Watson's poetry and prose
The Window
The Window
Y Ffenestr
Through tangled coverts I crept,
Crooning songs while others slept.
Among ivy clumps I clambered
Outside my lover’s chamber,
Pressing on through stem and leaf,
Ardent, stealthy as a thief,
Pulled apart the thick green cloak
To find a window wrought in oak:
There I sought, pursuing bliss,
At the casement, but one kiss
Cajoling my jewel-like girl,
But she refused, little churl.
Designed for a chink of light,
Tiny window – lover’s blight!
No magician ever wrought
Such a window, built to thwart
A suitor – unless you count
The one, up on Caerllion mount,
Through which Melwas climbed, afire
With precipitate desire,
Blithely convinced he ought to
Have Giant Gogfran’s daughter!
Though I tarry in the snow
The wrong side of her window,
Unlike Melwas, I’d wait weeks
Earning ague and cold cheeks.
If the seamstress of my pain
Were face-to-face with me again
For nine nights, no kind star
Would see the window left ajar:
Despair descends like a pall
Wedged within the whitewashed wall,
Blasted by winds, north and south,
Wishing we were mouth-to-mouth.
I’ll catch my death in the sleet
Long before our lips can meet:
Conspiracy of window-panes
Leaving lovers sore constrained!
Where the fennel grows, I lie;
A row of roses, black sky
My companions for my sin:
My pious girl stays within.
Window, lair of prudery,
May a devil pound away
At your casement and your shutter
With his torrid tool, and shatter
Laths, keyhole, and the joiner
Who made you like a gaoler:
May he blind you, eye of light,
And the hand that made you, blight!
Slay the wicked one, whose will
Impeded us, and hinders still!
Source material: Poem by Dafydd ap Gwilym, paraphrased by Giles Watson. A humorous narrative of amorous misadventure having affinities with ‘Under the Eaves’ and ‘The Ice’, this poem also concludes with a conventionally exaggerated curse, typical of Dafydd’s “obstruction” poems. Like ‘Under the Eaves’, the poem lightly mocks the serenade tradition by making the speaker (or singer) seem pathetic rather than heroic. The Giant Gogfran was the father of Arthur’s queen Gwenhwyfar (Guinevere). Caradoc of Llancarfan tells of the abduction of Gwenhwyfar by Melwas, a legendary king of Somerset, in his Vita Gildae, and the story is echoed, with Lancelot as the queen’s rescuer, in Chrétien le Troyes’s Le Chevalier de la Charette. We know from other poems that Dafydd was familiar with Ovid, and the subject matter here is reminiscent of the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, who try to kiss through a hole in the wall in the Metamorphoses. The poem contains large amounts of parenthesis, which I have ironed out for the sake of clarity in English. I was also unable to resist borrowing the Welsh “torrid” from line 41, and using it as an English adjective in line 44. In line 42, Dafydd describes the girl as “pious” (“llwyd”). It is intriguing to think that this may be a play on the name Morfudd Llwyd, especially given that other poems mention her piety and chaste behaviour.
The Window
The Window
Y Ffenestr
Through tangled coverts I crept,
Crooning songs while others slept.
Among ivy clumps I clambered
Outside my lover’s chamber,
Pressing on through stem and leaf,
Ardent, stealthy as a thief,
Pulled apart the thick green cloak
To find a window wrought in oak:
There I sought, pursuing bliss,
At the casement, but one kiss
Cajoling my jewel-like girl,
But she refused, little churl.
Designed for a chink of light,
Tiny window – lover’s blight!
No magician ever wrought
Such a window, built to thwart
A suitor – unless you count
The one, up on Caerllion mount,
Through which Melwas climbed, afire
With precipitate desire,
Blithely convinced he ought to
Have Giant Gogfran’s daughter!
Though I tarry in the snow
The wrong side of her window,
Unlike Melwas, I’d wait weeks
Earning ague and cold cheeks.
If the seamstress of my pain
Were face-to-face with me again
For nine nights, no kind star
Would see the window left ajar:
Despair descends like a pall
Wedged within the whitewashed wall,
Blasted by winds, north and south,
Wishing we were mouth-to-mouth.
I’ll catch my death in the sleet
Long before our lips can meet:
Conspiracy of window-panes
Leaving lovers sore constrained!
Where the fennel grows, I lie;
A row of roses, black sky
My companions for my sin:
My pious girl stays within.
Window, lair of prudery,
May a devil pound away
At your casement and your shutter
With his torrid tool, and shatter
Laths, keyhole, and the joiner
Who made you like a gaoler:
May he blind you, eye of light,
And the hand that made you, blight!
Slay the wicked one, whose will
Impeded us, and hinders still!
Source material: Poem by Dafydd ap Gwilym, paraphrased by Giles Watson. A humorous narrative of amorous misadventure having affinities with ‘Under the Eaves’ and ‘The Ice’, this poem also concludes with a conventionally exaggerated curse, typical of Dafydd’s “obstruction” poems. Like ‘Under the Eaves’, the poem lightly mocks the serenade tradition by making the speaker (or singer) seem pathetic rather than heroic. The Giant Gogfran was the father of Arthur’s queen Gwenhwyfar (Guinevere). Caradoc of Llancarfan tells of the abduction of Gwenhwyfar by Melwas, a legendary king of Somerset, in his Vita Gildae, and the story is echoed, with Lancelot as the queen’s rescuer, in Chrétien le Troyes’s Le Chevalier de la Charette. We know from other poems that Dafydd was familiar with Ovid, and the subject matter here is reminiscent of the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, who try to kiss through a hole in the wall in the Metamorphoses. The poem contains large amounts of parenthesis, which I have ironed out for the sake of clarity in English. I was also unable to resist borrowing the Welsh “torrid” from line 41, and using it as an English adjective in line 44. In line 42, Dafydd describes the girl as “pious” (“llwyd”). It is intriguing to think that this may be a play on the name Morfudd Llwyd, especially given that other poems mention her piety and chaste behaviour.