a starved, pinched, raving madman,
but sheltered in that dappled arbour,
my haven, my winter harbour,
my refuge from the bare heath,
my royal fort, my king’s rath.
Every night I glean and raid
and comb the floor of the oak wood.
My bands work into leaf and rind,
roots, windfalls on the ground,
they rake through matted watercress
and grope among the bog-berries,
cool brooklime, sorrel, damp moss,
wild garlic and raspberries,
apples, hazel-nuts, acorns,
the haws of sharp, jaggy hawthorns,
blackberries, the floating weed,
the whole store of the oak wood.
Keep me here, Christ, far away
from open ground and flat country.
Let me suffer the cold of glens.
I dread the cold of open plains.
ANON
translated by Seamus Heaney
Writing Out of Doors
A wall of forest looms above
and sweetly the blackbird sings;
all the birds make melody
over me and my books and things.
There sings to me the cuckoo
from bush-citadels in grey hood.
God’s doom! May the Lord protect me
writing well, under the great wood.
ANON
translated by James Carney
from The Mabinogi: Rhiannon
It’s little more than a bump in the land, a footnote
in the catalogue of hills, crags and ridges,
felt as an ache in the thighs, the heart’s
flip and gulp, by those heavy
with mutton and wine,
then a subtle sense of arrival, a breeze
scurrying up to attend to you,
the green swell of crown, the fields
gathering below.
They say if you sit on the summit
you’ll see a sight more chilling
than the greys of rain,
or something more brilliant than
lightning’s snazzy gold.
*
From up here, everything is cloud: the grass, forest, corn,
even the rocks, are nuances of weather.
The road’s a white line through the billows.
Pwyll watches with his men as
a figure grows there:
a horse with a lick of sunlight on its back,
a horse with a knight in gilt armour,
a horse with a splash of silk
horsewoman riding,
not so much moving as sharpening.
Will she ever be real?
The boy he sends down
finds the road silent, her back
already dwindling.
*
She is woman and horse. She rides slower than daydreams.
She is what you’ve forgotten, where the time went.
Singleminded as the sun, she rides
always one way, and the air’s
warmed by her passing.
The man he sends after her, the second day,
tries slowing down; she rides slower still
and the road grows between them.
He gallops again –
always she dawdles away from him
till she’s as small as a gnat,
and his horse gasping.
She slips into yesterday
without being now.
*
On the third day he rides himself, on his sleekest horse,
till it’s yeasty with sweat. She is a brushstroke
on the stillness of the facing page,
illuminated in gold
on a green background
and there is always a white space between them.
At last he calls out to her to stop.
There’s a wispy sound, the sense
of a veil lifting,
and they are side-by-side, flank to flank,
He should have asked her sooner –
better for the horse.
They talk in time to the hoofs:
saddle-courtesies.
*
Later he will ask himself how she knew who he was
and why she chose him out of all the princes
who hunt under these lumbering clouds.
Now he is watching her smile
as it comes and goes,
a slip of candlelight seen under a door,
listening to the cluck of laughter
that nestles in the depths of her throat,
hearing himself talk back
in the silences she leaves for him.
Later they will feast and dance
and climb the long stairs.
Later he’ll wonder. Today
there’s wonder enough.
ANON
translated by Matthew Francis
‘Derry I cherish ever’
Derry I cherish ever.
It is calm, it is clear.
Crowds of white angels on their rounds
At every corner.
ANON
translated by Seamus Heaney
I am Taliesin
Taliesin. I sing perfect metre,
Which will last to the end of the world.
My patron is Elphin …
I know why there is an echo in a hollow;
Why silver gleams; why breath is black; why liver is bloody;
Why a cow has horns; why a woman is affectionate;
Why milk is white; why holly is green;
Why a kid is bearded; why the cow-parsnip is hollow;
Why brine is salt; why ale is bitter;
Why the linnet is green and berries red;
Why a cuckoo complains; why it sings;
I know where the cuckoos of summer are in winter.
I know what beasts there are at the bottom of the sea;
How many spears in battle; how many drops in a shower;
Why a river drowned Pharaoh’s people;
Why fishes have scales.
Why a white swan has black feet …
I have been a blue salmon,
I have been a dog, a stag, a roebuck on the mountain,
A stock, a spade, an axe in the hand,
A stallion, a bull, a buck,
I was reaped and placed in an oven;
I fell to the ground when I was being roasted
And a hen swallowed me.
For nine nights was I in her crop.
I have been dead, I have been alive.
I am Taliesin.
ANON
translated by Gwyn Jones
The Heart of the Wood
My hope and my love,
we will go for a while into the wood,
scattering the dew,
where we will see the trout,
we will see the blackbird on its nest;
the deer and the buck calling,
the little bird that is sweetest singing on the branches;
the cuckoo on the top of the fresh green;
and death will never come near us
for ever in the sweet wood.
ANON
translated by Lady Augusta Gregory
This ae Night
This ae night, this ae night,
Everie night and alle,
Fire and salt and candle light
And Christ receive thy sawle!
When thou from here away hast past,
Everie night and alle,
To Whinny moor thou com’st at last,
And Christ receive thy sawle!
If ever thou gavest hosen and shoon,
Everie night and alle,
Sit thee down and put them on:
And Christ receive they sawle!
If hosen and shoon thou never gav’t nane
Everie night and alle,
The whins shall prick thee to the bare bane:
From Whinny moor when thou may’st pass,
Everie night and alle,
To Brig o’Dread thou com’st at last:
And Christ receive thy sawle!
From Brig o’Dread when thou may’st pass
Everie night and alle,
To Purgatory fire thou com’st at last,
And Christ receive thy sawle!
If ever thou gavest meat or drink,
Everie night and alle,
The fire shall never make thee shrink:
And Christ receive thy sawle!
If meat and drink thou ne’er gav’t nane,
Everie night and alle,
The fire will burn thee to the bare bane,
And Christ receive thy sawle!
This ae night, this ae night,
Everie night and alle,
Fire and salt and candle light,
And Christ receive thy sawle!
ANON
from The Parliament of Fowls
I saw a garden, full of blossoming trees,
In a green mead through which a river goes,
Where sweetness everlasting fills the breeze,
Of flowers blue and yellow, white and rose,
And cold wellsprings whose water deathless flows,
Teeming with little fishes quick and light,
With fins of red and scales of silver bright.
On every bough were birds; I heard them sing
With voice angelic in their harmony,
And some were busy hatchlings forth to bring;
The little rabbits came to play nearby,
And further off I then began to spy
The timid roe, the buck, the hart and hind,
Squirrels, and other beasts of gentle kind.
Of stringed instruments playing in accord
I heard the sound so ravishing that day
That God himself, maker of all and Lord,
Might never have heard better, I dare say.
Therewith a wind that scarce could gentler play
Made in the leafage green a murmur soft,
Harmonious with the sound of birds aloft.
And of that place the air so temperate was,
No hurt was known of either heat or cold;
There goodly spices grew, and wholesome grass,
And no man there grew ever sick or old.
Still was there joy above a thousand-fold
More than man’s telling, nor was it ever night,
But day for ever in all people’s sight.
GEOFFREY CHAUCER
translated by E. B. Richmond
from The General Prologue
When in April the sweet showers fall
And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all
The veins are bathed in liquor of such power
As brings about the engendering of the flower,
When also Zephyrus with his sweet breath
Exhales an air in every grove and heath
Upon the tender shoots, and the young sun
His half-course in the sign of the Ram has run,
And the small fowl are making melody
That sleep away the night with open eye
(So nature pricks them and their heart engages)
Then people long to go on pilgrimages
And palmers long to seek the stranger strands
Of far-off saints, hallowed in sundry lands,
And specially, from every shire’s end
Of England, down to Canterbury they wend
To seek the holy blissful martyr, quick
To give his help to them when they were sick.
GEOFFREY CHAUCER
translated by Nevill Coghill
from The Nun’s Priest’s Tale
Now let me turn again to tell my tale;
This blessed widow and her daughters two
Heard all these hens in clamour and halloo
And, rushing to the door at all this shrieking,
They saw the fox towards the covert streaking
And, on his shoulder, Chanticleer stretched flat.
‘Look, look!’ they cried, ‘O mercy, look at that!
Ha! Ha! the fox!’ and after him they ran,
And stick in hand ran many a serving man,
Ran Coll our dog, ran Talbot, Bran and Shaggy,
And with a distaff in her hand ran Maggie,
Ran cow and calf and ran the very hogs
In terror at the barking of the dogs;
The men and women shouted, ran and cursed,
They ran so hard they thought their hearts would burst,
They yelled like fiends in Hell, ducks left the water
Quacking and flapping as on point of slaughter,
Up flew the geese in terror over the trees,
Out of the hive came forth the swarm of bees
So hideous was the noise – God bless us all,
Jack Straw and all his followers in their brawl
Were never half so shrill, for all their noise,
When they were murdering those Flemish boys,
As that day’s hue and cry upon the fox.
They grabbed up trumpets made of brass and box,
Of horn and bone, on which they blew and pooped,
And therewithal they shouted and they whooped
So that it seemed the very heavens would fall.
GEOFFREY CHAUCER
translated by Nevill Coghill
The Seagull
Smooth gull on the sea’s lagoon,
White as snow or the white moon,
Sun shard, gauntlet of the sea,
Untroubled is your beauty.
Buoyant you ride the rough tide,
A swift, proud, fish-eating bird.
Come to me, anchored on land,
Sea-lily, come to my hand.
White-robed, whiter than paper,
You’re a sea-nun, sleek and pure.
Wide praise is for you and her;
Circle that castle tower,
Search till you see her, seagull,
Bright as Eigr on that wall.
Take all my pleading to her,
Tell her my life I offer.
Tell her, should she be alone –
Gently with that gentle one –
If she will not take me, I,
Losing her, must surely die.
I completely worship her.
Friends, no man ever loved more –
Taliesin’s nor Merlin’s eye
Saw a woman as lovely.
Copper-curled, curved as Venus,
How beautiful the girl is.
O seagull, but see her face,
Loveliest on the world’s surface,
Then bring me her sweet greeting,
Or my certain death you bring.
DAFYDD AP GWILYM
translated by Leslie Norris
The Thrush
Music of a thrush, clearbright
Lovable language of light,
Heard I under a birchtree
Yesterday, all grace and glee –
Was ever so sweet a thing
Fine-plaited as his whistling?
Matins, he reads the lesson,
A chasuble of plumage on.
His cry from a grove, his brightshout
Over countrysides rings out,
Hill prophet, maker of moods,
Passion’s bright bard of glenwoods.
Every voice of the brookside
Sings he, in his darling pride,
Every sweet-metred love-ode,
Every song and organ mode,
Competing for a truelove,
Every catch for woman’s love.
Preacher and reader of lore,
Sweet and clear, inspired rapture,
Bard of Ovid’s faultless rhyme,
Chief prelate mild of Springtime.
From his birch, where lovers throng,
Author of the wood�
�s birdsong,
Merrily the glade re-echoes –
Rhymes and metres of love he knows.
He on hazel sings so well
Through cloistered trees (winged angel)
Hardly a bird of Eden
Had by rote remembered then
How to recite what headlong
Passion made him do with song.
DAFYDD AP GWILYM
translated by Tony Conran
from Piers Plowman
In the season of summer with the sun at its highest
I dressed in my work-clothes like any poor shepherd,
in the garb of a hermit but for worldly work
and set off through the country to find what I’d find.
I met many wonders and uncommon sights,
till one morning in May on the hills behind Malvern
I fell sound asleep, worn out by the walking.
As I lay on the ground, resting and slumbering,
I’d this marvellous dream I’ll describe to you now.
I saw all the good that live in the world
and the bad just as busy, be certain of that:
loyalty, betrayal, let-down and cunning –
I saw them all in my sleep: that’s what I’m saying.
I looked to the East, in the track of the sun
and saw a great tower – Truth’s home, I imagined.
Then to the westward I looked shortly after
and saw a deep valley. Death lived down there,
I’d no doubt in my mind, with all evil spirits.
The Map and the Clock Page 4