Love's Tilth

Love’s Tilth

Hwsmonaeth Cariad

 

I loved, and bore the labour,

And am, twice over, lover.

I fan love like an ember,

And lamely I remember

How love, like a worm, will filch

Hope, and channer through the flesh.

 

There is a germination

In my heart – a strong motion

Of growing: a shoot groping

From a sown seed burst open.

My labour, ever honest:

To till love until harvest.

 

Care and woe dogged winter tilth

When ice crystals crept in stealth

Destroying, and January

Brought no joyful husbandry:

I mulched my love, ploughed furrows

For Morfudd, ignored her frowns.

Sharp were the ploughshares which scored

Through my breast and left it scarred

To the heart, and the coulter

Rent my ribs with a clatter,

Scored a wound, sowed my portion

Of love, harrowed my passion.

 

I waited three months, patient

Until Spring’s warmth grew potent

And love took root. It was stout

Toil to fence it all about,

Protect it from slugs. I strove

Night and day – kept love alive.

 

Nor was I lazy in May,

But guarded wealth, crops made

Safe with a hedge well-planted,

The green twigs plashed and plaited

Together. While her love thrust

Its stem through my riven breast

I did not flinch, but held fast,

Fixed my eyes upon the feast

Of love to come; no shirking:

I whet my steel for reaping.

 

Grim loss! Great storms came and felled

Every wheat-stalk in the field.

From the south, a veering wind

Seared through my heart, cleft a wound,

And in my wind-battered face,

The stars of love, my eyes, fierce

With weeping, bore heaviest

The rheum of tearful harvest,

And Morfudd’s form, refracted

In their wet flood, was fractured

And swam, occluded by torrents

And eyelids red with torment,

The field awash with flowing

Water, my fond heart failing.

The harvest of my heart is lost:

Not a single sheaf is left.

 

Wind’s fury, autumn’s rabble

Leaves ravaged fields of stubble,

And fast rain flows from the high

Cheeks of the eastern sky:

Tears for her of Eigr’s hue –

My crop all spoiled, and I rue

The day I planted. Alas,

Love brings only torment, loss:

I sowed, yet I failed to reap.

Ruin came, found me asleep.

 

I am pledged to blight and dearth,

For now love must starve to death.

 

Poem by Dafydd ap Gwilym, paraphrased by Giles Watson, 2012. This poem provides quite compelling evidence that Dafydd was familiar with the 13th Century French Roman de la Rose, which also made comparison between the ill-fortunes of unrequited love and the farmer’s struggle to sustain a crop until harvest. Indeed, it is known for certain that this text was available in Wales in Dafydd’s time, for a copy of it is listed as one of the belongings of an executed rebel, Llywelyn Bren, in 1317. (See Rachel Bromwich, ‘Tradition and Innovation in the Poetry of Dafydd ap Gwilym’, in Aspects of the Poetry of Dafydd ap Gwilym, Cardiff, 1986, pp. 73-75.) However, it is also likely that the poem contains a strong autobiographical element, and that the “storm” represents Morfudd’s marriage to the churlish Bwa Bach, who is later to be characterised by Dafydd as Eiddig, the Jealous One. It was not a bountiful harvest for Morfudd either; there is evidence in others of Dafydd's poems that she was abused by her husband.

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBcr5dvr3Yc

 

Done