Two Poems by Kit Fryatt
Savvy
after Raimbaut de Vaqueiras (fl. 1180)
Sage and fool,
humble in haughtiness
jealous and
free and bold and wretched
I am when needs
must, and joyful and abject
and I can be
complaisant and gross
and base and
adroit, churlish and courtly
mean and gentle,
knowing good from naughty
and having the
wit to choose what’s better
I only fail
when I’m thwarted in desire.
In all my
dealings I'm savvy and ingenious
save that my
master-mistress has me distracted
when she
humbles me in word and act I accept it
and am proud of
it because she's gracious and gorgeous
and I want her
beautiful body lying beside me
so much that I
get right sweet-natured and free
and I'm
wretched because I daren't ask her favour
and too bold
because I want what's past compare.
Beautiful lady,
source of my joyfulness
I’m abject
because I want you and I daren’t—
for you make me
graceful in the eyes of the great
provoking
provokers, engrossing the gross
I’ll shrink
into meanness if you won’t have mercy
my worth
depends on your thinking me worthy
as I’d have
churls consider me a boor
and Their
Graces, something of a cavalier.
My songs
disparaged love, once
because a
beautiful liar gave me such wounds
but you, lady,
replete with everything good,
offer both
bounty and recompense—
what Love, and
you, have promised me
is a hundred
times more than any knight’s fief
and you are
worth so much more again, again more
I want you
(fear I’ll lose you) and to be your conqueror.
Joy and youth
and all the sweet courtesies,
lady, your
lovely form clothed in intellect
has got you the
ear and the regard of the élite
and, by my
faith, if I had the good chance
to please you
with my songs or my body
I would possess
merit in the topmost degree
and beauty too,
I may announce and aver
because my eyes
tell me so, and my ears.
My Britomartis,
clemency and mercy,
the long love
and absolute fidelity
I render you
should warrant the favour
of candid love,
I can hope for no better.
Lady Biatritz,
your fair and courteous mien
your beauty and
merit universally clear
make my songs
swell up with vigour and swagger
because you
gild them with your peerless treasure.
BODYSERVANT
I
sleep at the foot of the stair
the
rough nights
of the bed
I
know his sleeping breath and its feint
perhaps he knows mine
his
lungs are congested
he is close to sixty
and I am
past
this year
the middle of life
the
fair hair he cut the night
before we started
a
four years’ pelt for Cairo
that
would not shame the Magdalen
is
gone as he said a stringy
tonsure
it would be
when an attack wakes him I bring caudle
we
have both killed men that
he might live to this
pass
their grey shades stand between us
so he seems
insubstantial
he
suffers as tall men do worst with his knees
his
back
in
the mornings he is agile like an anvil
as
the mounting block he refuses
he
and his wife had eleven children
and some of them live
far away
he
misses
her
hand beneath his head
he says
to
put my hand under his head
would
be worth the ransom of the son of the king of Cairo
but
I’ve never been lucky
there
was a lady
the
guest of many important men
he
visited her when she stayed with them
then
I watched till dawn
I
knew her name but never her face
she
was a grey shape in thought
like
a place where a painter meant
to
fill in one of the three Maries
a
grey form lying on
the
body I know better than my own
its
scar furrows
turn and turn about
the
body to which I attribute
every
scar on my own
lying on a grey form
until
I called out
my fine friend
here
comes the dawn
chief glory
glorious lord
here comes the dawn