[1489] The Ruin

Guest poem submitted by Dave Fortin, <46FORTIN@>:

Nothing but a ruin now
Between moorland and meadow,
Once the owners saw in you
A comely cottage, bright, new,
Now roof, rafters, ridge-pole, all
Broken down by a broken wall.

A day of delight was once there
For me, long ago, no care
When I had a glimpse of her
Fair in an ingle-corner.
Beside each other we lay
In the delight of that day.

Her forearm, snowflake-lovely,
Softly white, pillowing me,
Proffered a pleasant pattern
For me to give in my turn,
And that was our blessing for
The new-cut lintel and door.

Now the wild wind, wailing by,
Crashes with curse and with cry
Against my stones, a tempest
Born and bred in the East,
Or south ram-batterers break
The shelter that folk forsake.

Life is illusion and grief;
A tile whirls off, as a leaf
Or a lath goes sailing, high
In the keening of kite-kill cry.
Could it be our couch once stood
Sturdily under that wood?
Pillar and post, it would seem
Now are less than a dream.
Are you that, or only the lost
Wreck of a fiddle, rune-ghost?

"Dafydd, the cross on their graves
Marks what little it saves,
Says, They did well in their lives."

	-- Dafydd ap Gwilym

This is one of my favorite Dafydd ap Gwilym poems.  Dafydd is considered
to be the best of the medieval Welsh poets, living only from 1340-1370,
and is particularly noted for his rhyme schemes and poetic composition.
His themes run from the very sexual (he did an ode to his penis) to
nature poetry to such pieces as above that focus on the transitoriness
of this life.  He is carefree, randy and thoughtful all at the same
time.

The above is my favorite of his more 'thoughtful' works, where he
considers the fate of a cottage that he has had a tryst in earlier in
life.  Given his short life-span, it is remarkable that he writes as an
old man in some sense in this poem--the cottage of his earlier pleasures
is now a ruin, and perhaps is an allegory of life.

The above translation is from the Oxford Book of Welsh Verse in English.

[this poem is archived, accessible and awaiting your comments at]
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1490.html
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