Monday, December 01, 2008

XIX by Daffyd ap Gwilym

Miserable poet, fear filling him, harrassed and stumbling. Dark is the night on the cold bog. Dark - O God a torch! Dark over all, how shall I come out alive? Dark - great madness grips me! Dark now is the treacherous bog, dark the growth of the moon. Miserable man, that the sun, the good sun, is hidden. Dark it is for me, a poet, shut out with all my fame in dark and bitter winds outside. And if I were found here in the one land that hates me, bared to the guile and treachery of strangers, how should I and the gray horse escape?

Worse though, if I were caught, drowned in the bog-hole as I went with my horse in the mud at the bottom of the bog, after all the reverence I have had. Who can escape the bog-hole filled with the fishes of Gwynn of the Mist, a pit between crag and moor, place of ghosts and of their children, a lake of vinegar and bloody waves where swine wash?

I ruined my good Carnarvon stockings
on this wrong road, I do not know why, except ill-luck, my horse and I fell in the bog-hole. The cold first overcame the lout, then was he heated as he dug and scrambled out. So now I am come to land, and can freely give the bog my blessing.

4 comments:

  1. From Claude: Silence admiratif...

    As I've written on every post of Dafydd ap Gwilym.

    Illustration very appropriate.

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  2. :) Glad you (still) like the bard and - the 'historic' photograph which was taken 23 years ago on a bog in Connemara.

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  3. I recently came accross your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.


    Ruth

    http://muffinsnow.com

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  4. Thank you very much, Ruth-Tessa. I am delighted. And a friend of mine spontaneously feels the desire to spam your bank account with 7 bn Dollars.
    Have a joyous 1. April.

    ReplyDelete