The Converse: Arthur and Gwenhwyfar


Our Garden

i

She talks about water the way I talk
about Rome. I have never seen fear
spread uneven across her face like it does
for those in battle before death. I realise

love won't scare easily. We walk for miles,
wrap ourselves in silence as rivers, halted
by winter, lay frozen like far-twisting
white ribbons through the russet curls

of her hair. She becomes a teacher;
me- her scholar. I learn surrender
in this wilderness, watch copper fish swim
beneath ice. The current still flows, as it does

in my veins, leading to the ocean. I turn,
see the dark trail of prints in snow - of deer,
foxes, and our own. Her smile, like the pale
of morning sun, spreads quietly on land.

We leave our mark on these hills --
they will remain when we no longer can.

ii

Fingers run over chapped lips, icy in the cool
of lake waters. We practice love under darkness,
black woven through branches in the still
of winter’s bare shoulders. I remember

tangled moss breathing against my spine.
You said night never shows the green bellies
of the world, or redheads of heather. Silver birch,
smooth in my hand, was your lamplight. I believe

I will be forgotten; caverns take you like a child
digging for treasure. Necklaces pressed with gems, silk
embroidered with nightingales and dragon tongues.
Gold perhaps? A chalice of blood. I am fortunate,

not for dreaming the crescent of your mouth
fallen on my neck in death, but for knowing
that those moments under darkness would delve
into tunnels - long chasms beneath lace and bone

where cold evenings would pull me from bed
to our garden and I could remember you.

The Decay of a Woman

i

Nests come undone on the wind. Dry grasses
float the river like the ending of things.

Limes stoop at the waters edge, tap shutters,
send seeds in spirals to the woodland floor.

Birds have taken what they need, the rest
covers a path lost from its door.

What wood is left the ivy stole--
the handle, the small and carved squirrel

giving entrance to our secret place.
And now a shell, fallen in this wild thicket,

benefits woodcutters or escape from bad weather
for a lone jackdaw. If a rug was laid here,

over floorboards-- love bound together
and pummelling like the very life

of this timber frame, then the moths have come
silent in the night, leaving with the very last of it.

ii

Brighid follows from the fireplace. Her body,
emerged from amber ripples, is bound
in golden silk to my bedside. A single finger

works its way below my skin. A figure of eight
on my womb like eagles that circle Avalon.

The cradle is empty like my arms. Childless -
like a sow, starved and disfigured. The hour
is gone, lost on me like a new grave. When I battle

envy with thin blade and sunken navel,
she will leave in the flames, alone and unsatisfied.

iii

Like the summer nests I am undone. Scattered
from battlements like the very last of me.

Medrawd comes on horseback. And you are gone,
He calls me Gwenhwyfach, talks of prosperity,
of battles, of children. These herbs he feeds me
scarlet the countryside. When we kiss,
blood spills my lips, courses my neck
in thin streams. Medrawd’s hands - unrelenting.

By the banks, beneath the wide parasol of limes
and their windows of starlight, our limbs
will be painted against the cover of night--a symbol
stitched to the fabric of our ancestors. Brighid, satisfied.

.

Camlan

“Arthur fab Uthr of the long sword
I will say to you now the truth:
there is a master over every strong one.”

“Gwenhwyfar you are Gwenhwyfach.
I have never been healed of love-sickness for you.
Medrawd is dead. I myself almost.

A surgeon has never seen a scar
where Caledfwlch struck once:
I have struck Medrawd nine times.”

--- found by Jenny Rowland ‘in the margin of the Dingestow 8 copy
of Ymddiddan Arthur a'r Eryr’

i

I remember foreseeing this moment, your head
rested in my lap, surrounded by the bodies
of your most loyal. And I, the bone
you could not cough up. The smell of death
clings to this hill, to my skin; irremovable.

Look how horses wander amid the fallen
searching for their masters. They are aimless,
worthy of nothing more than a choke-sack.
How cruel it is they are left behind as I am.

I have been Gwenhwyfach, Arthur, it is true -
bringing you your death. I could not see
Medrawd’s teeth. He turns a mind septic,
a soul vain. What have I done
to find you here, your horse nudging your arm?

ii

You are Gwenhwyfar, mine only, stay awhile.

To think eight seasons pass with so much change.
Battles in the north kept me. All the blood;
I can hardly breathe for it. I hear my men call
on the wind, through the sycamores and barley.

I left you on your own too long.

I remember the winter of our tracks
leading for miles across these hills.
I was invincible, then. How we have borne
loneliness. Such a black seed. I can see

whiteness twisting through waters, ghostlike.
It is Vivien. How she cries.

.. So, this is sleep.

I will find you, Gwenhwyfar,
whatever this long pause of quiet has for me.

.

The Voice

i

Arthur, you are not the only shadow
haunting me. The rot has come.

Yesterday, trees shook amber on my hair
as I begged Vivien my future. Medrawd’s face
swelled the laken surface, followed me
across the heath. No battlement could stop
his coming through the walls, the spitting in my ear.

This will be the last time I see Autumn.

ii

I need something beautiful, my love -
something stone and silver blade
adorned in Vivien’s winter hands
from the mouth of Avalon; body of water.

I will clamber oak with a plait from your midnight hair,
cut the clouds Medrawd poured upon your back.

iii

At my window, in gold gilded mirrors,
at the foot of my bed, venom is a sweet taste
on my lips, a whisper in my ear. Every word
I consume like birch roots swallowing
the badness of Earth.

What guise is this?

I hear him now, fear
the madness clawing at my pillow.

He brings Gwenhwyfach. Serpent tail
and tongue slithers the ceiling. Granite
is all I smell, sitting here, trying to see
beyond her cold skin. And to think

this hysteria was a sorcery only Merlin
could utter. How wrong I have been.

iv

I have battled on the brittle spine of hilltops
as white as your fingers, white as my soul
now forgiven by the men I have buried,
their blood drying silent in my veins. And yet,

I could not keep him from you. Even in death
stagnant waters pour through moss. His laughter
echoes in the blackest corners, knowing he distorted
and divided your face. I would spend a universe

caged in his yellow and seeping to mend you.
Anger spills the dark like a scavenger slipping
between cracks in the mortar. I twist
within my clay tower, ask for your arms, your safety

and the trellis of your skin. Teach me, my love,
I can not read these lines along my palm.
Fill them with soil, marry my hands to the earth,
challenge me with the nature of your limbs.

v

The merchant sewed a vial
to my fingers before daybreak.
He keeps these secrets for me
with a pouch of gold. And the liquid-- pale frost
like the stream from a bitten apple. The taste
is silver birch when we were Vivien herself--
youthful, running through woods
before it was a shrine to battles, before the blood.

How I fail you, Arthur.

My eyes are tired, like my shoulders.
Morning has become the child
I could not carry for you. It is ghostlike
and see-through. Life has left the smile
shattered on the mirror. This is no longer
a dawn of new sunlight calling me
into its furl of leaves and whiteness
beyond the brow of our hillsides. It is easy

sinking into cushions. The window is open.
I’ve let her thin tail out. She crawled
across the ceiling. I heard her screaming
as I drank the final drops of bark. This plague,

my guilt, driven to death by the voice.


The Sleeper

Vivien comes to me
in oat-white muslin. I hear her voice
carried low across lake ripples, through mist,
through the hearts of slain warriors and saints.

She appears in my darkness, her feet
buried in moss and dried leaves.
Fingers decorate my soul with mercury.
When snow falls on the hills of Tor
I become the blade.

When she asks me
I will wake.