The Deluge

The Deluge

 

You’ve probably heard about

My tryst in that abundant

Bed of leaves, with cuckoo songs

And thrushes as assistants,

A fair girl bedded beside

Me. She lay and sighed, and bruised

Leaves of May in clenched fingers.

The whole thing was just flawless.

 

The auburn girl was caught out

Right at the climax, by Christ:

There came a great, violent gush,

A clap of thunder, a rush

Of pelting rain, a wild flash

Of lightning. Rent with a gash,

The sky shuddered, and the lass

Grew pale, tied on her head-dress

Hurriedly, ran for her life.

So did I. Love came to grief.

 

Then the flame-beaked thunder wrecked

Our bed of pleasure, and wrought

Destruction, like a crow

On carrion, struck a blow

Against love, blew through the ricks,

Bull-brazen, breaking whole rocks

To smithereens. Buellt burned

With bright lightning, embattled

By fury in a welter

And mounting walls of water.

 

There was a wild trumpet blast

Of solid rain, fit to burst

Apart the firmament. Stars

Were quenched. Whole dams hung ajar.

Fear made jelly of my knees;

Rain-squalls were thick as oak trees;

My hair askew. Claps fit to stun

Blew like powder from a gun,

And rancorous as a red

Witch beating basins, dread

Tattooed like a rattle-bag,

A carping crake, a vile hag.

 

Christ is bursting oak barrels

In the sky. There are battles

High among the cloud-turrets.

Rain cleaves rocks in cold torrents.

Shale cascades, castles clattering

To ground. A grim smattering

Of laughter rends like a drum

With its attack, and the thrum

Is like a gigantic sky-

Fart, done by a monster: die

Or run. It shakes a hard fist

At lovers. Who would dare tryst

Under it? We were alone

With that slug of thunder, thrown

Into terror. Bellowing

Surrounded us. We’re following

Our instincts. We run away

When the ass-clouds belch and bray.

 

Thunder is evil, love weak.

The flood came and did its work,

The wet churl. Lust is a storm.

Neither she nor I can swim.

 

Poem attributed to Dafydd ap Gwilym (Welsh, fourteenth century), paraphrased by Giles Watson. Buellt is in southern Powys, on the English border, and was where Llywelyn ap Gruffudd pursued his last campaign before his death in 1282. Dafydd is technologically on-the-ball with his reference to gunpowder, which must have arrived in Wales within his lifetime or just before it. A rattle-bag is a skin filled with stones, used for scaring birds away from crops. The call of the corncrake is not dissimilar. The shifts in tense are characteristic of a dramatizing tendency in late-mediaeval poetry. Although Dafydd’s authorship is contested, the cleverness of the extended metaphor, which seems to compare the deluge to a simultaneous orgasm, is typical of his work. The picture shows the River Thames in flood at Buscot, Oxfordshire.

 

Reading: www.youtube.com/watch?v=erShuW4D694

 

Done