Extracts from Gawain (based on the Middle English poem)

From Fitt II

There is a violent mind in the mud,
         knee-high, thigh-high
and his horse sinks to its flanks
jewelled with gorse-seed
         sinew and bone, raw
under the downpour.
                               Hooves haul him
out of that harrowing mud,
and the man’s weight,
burning for strain, wrenches free
from acres of flood.
Out of nowhere, it seems, a white hail comes,
         milk-haze of storm.
Once, the earth gapes, ready to receive them.
Then shakes them off again, slow flies
         from a dog’s hide.
Sometime after nightfall, Gawain rouses himself
in the wet dark to pray.
Buffeted glimmer of light to the east.
         Rain-numb, he crosses himself once
and crawls back to sleep.

 

 

Prayer being absent, the heart
         becomes a stone.
So Gawain, travelling alone and hungry,
comes stripped
to the ten tips of his fingers, finding them
bare, unadorned,
like a ruined church or abandoned hall.
         Head bent
he mutters the name of the Virgin.
Slowly, through the cold trees, a flash of white
gathers to a stand.
A palace of bone appears there, floating
on a moat,
its stark turrets paper cut-outs,
lean and spare.
Gawain falls
to his knees, lifts earth-bound ice
         to his mouth,
lost in adoration.

 

 

“I swear, whatsoever I win in these woods will be yours.
Whatever you achieve must be mine in return.”
Making this their forwarde, they drink then as men
         only drink
while the fire burns, red-racked embers alive and walking
long into darkness.

 

FITT III

                                 Before dawn,
the lord is awake again. Out on the forest track,
huntsmen hold his hounds ready,
leashed and baying — fierce, clamouring din!
Brake-deep in the woods, deer spring out, brown-skinned,
terrified by beaters
thwacking the frozen ground. Fleeing, they’re driven
ever forward,
the slant of arrows behind,
ahead steel jaws. Hit, they roar like bulls. Horns
shiver the air strident.
Men, whooping and hollering, follow on foot
and on horseback. Flights
of feathered shafts whistle past them into hides.
The swiftest deer, run-out and parched now, make for the fresh-
         water streams
only to be pulled down by hounds stationed there,
large-limbed and trembling at the leash.
The last deer fail. Falling, they bleat and bleed, the lord
beside himself with delight,
ordering their carcases to be heaped up, split and skinned.
Back at the castle, Gawain lies sleeping,
         warm in sunlight.
But he is not silent for long.
The dream recedes.
He drifts back to the light,
         just-recalled-where-he-is, a nip
to the air, and a cry in the still-dark corridors
of Hautdesert.
Comfortable, at ease, he sinks
listening to the wind
its soft indeterminate murmur, sunshine
tooled
just out of sight on the walls.
And into the breath-steady ritual
         of drawing back to consciousness
back to himself
                  back to the memory
         of sacrifice
comes the jarring unexpected thing.
A scratching at his door
         a littel dyn.
And then the dropped latch, lifting.
Smiling, she comes. Gently, she creeps.
Folding full skirts. Feeling her ticklish way
         on the web.
He lays and lets his startled lids stay shut
as though asleep.
She perches on his bed, a swallow at his side,
bright and laughing, her scent
red-gold on gold, dipping in and out
of consciousness,
         steadily waiting
for the flicker of an eyelid, the rise of his chest.
He lies and dreams, and the room shines, grows warm.
Her whole being steadily, composedly
         waiting.
‘You’re welcome to this flesh,’ she whispers
when he wakes. Denied, she laughs
         and asks
how he can be ‘Gawain’ — for love goes hand in hand
with such a name —
         and yet he will not kiss.
He gives his mouth at this, makes the dangerous promise
that lights the soul and leaves it
darkened to the rest.
Then takes himself to Mass, to kneel before the host
         and confess.
With daylight gone, the weary hunt rides home.
Strong still, the lord calls them all to hall, to have the ladies
down and see the tails of deer they’ve slain.
‘All these are yours,’ he tells Gawain. ‘That is your prize.
         Now where is mine?’
Gawain has nothing but a kiss to give. He throws both arms
about his neck and gives the man his kiss; admits,
‘That’s all I have achieved today.’
‘A kiss is good,’ the lord replies.
‘But make it better still and tell me where
you won this wealth.’
Gawain though shakes his head.
         ‘That was not our deal,’ he says.
‘Don’t ask me more.’
They feast, and a sinuous flame leaps from the fire. The cup’s
brought out, and they renew their pact
to swap what each man wins.
         It’s late before they find their beds that night,
under the ice-pool of a winter’s moon, blue-gold hood
         and halo hard as bone.

 

 

Oblivious to the hounds circling upwind and panting, muscular, rump
         to shoulder, eager for the chase,
the fox himself stands watchful at the edge of a clearing, surveying
stiff grass, ice-locked.
Frost clings raw to the iron-clad earth. The sun rises, ruddied
against the cloud rack, a red eye
utterly cried-out
that morning, scouring the welkyn, shuffling the sky’s massive drift
for signs of fox.
One whiff and he’s off. Helter-skelter, criss-crossing wet fields
and muddied tracks. The hounds
fly after him, their hard-baying tongues heard as far away
as Hautdesert. There, her white throat bare,
the lady is entering Gawain’s bedchamber. Tiny bright stones,
         exquisitely-cut, hang in her hair.
Both her back and her breasts are smooth and exposed: gorgeous,
light-footed, she comes to his bed
in a robe trimmed with fur, laughing and calling
         his name.
Gawain wakes, dazzled. With answering laughter, he lays aside
         all her kisses and hot protestations
of love. Again
she comes at him. “Take this ring,” she whispers. When he refuses,
         she unhooks a belt from her waist,
green and gold, hung with tassels and pendants, a rich girdle,
and urges him to accept it, bending her face to his: “A poor gift,
unless you wish to save a man from death.”
Horns blow, out on the reed-edged marsh. The fox doubles back
too late; the hounds have found his scent.
They fall on him, and he is rent, flayed by furious teeth and claws,
         bloodied, a trophy.