Translation from the poetry of the 14th century Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym:

The Ruin

Dafydd was fond of poems addressing or conversing imaginatively with others – usually a woman, but otherwise another poet, a preacher or a friar, his servant, his own shadow, various birds, sunshine, and even the abstraction hiraeth ‘longing’. In this poem he enters into dialogue with a ruined house, recalling the amorous joys he experienced there in the past. With the house’s response, however, the poem takes on a more serious tone as it touches on the uncertainties of life in this world. The poem then ends as the house itself reminds Dafydd, by name, of the passing of all things, but with a final touch of optimism.

The sparse remains of Brogynin, Dafydd’s house, 2017 – Photo: Anthony Griffiths

The Ruin
‘You, broken-down shack with a gaping backside,
between the moorland and the fallow,
Woe to any who saw you – they would think –

4       as a delightful hall of old,
and who see you today with a shattered roof,
beneath your ribs a broken house.
And moreover, by your fine wall

8       there was a day – painful rebuke –
within you that it was more joyful
than you are now, wretched framework,
when I saw – brilliantly I spread her fame –

12     in your corner – a fair one within –
a maiden – she was noble and genteel –
finely shaped, lying beside me,
with each one’s arm – her memory shall remain –

16     entwined around the other:
a graceful girl’s arm, bright as fine snow,
beneath the ear of the best lad for praise,
and my own arm – simple tricks –

20     under the left ear of a beautiful, gentle girl.
A happy time for the joyful under your thick beams,
but today is not that day.’

The Ruin:

‘My complaint – truly the spell of a host –
24     is about the path of the wild wind.
A storm from the bosom of the east
beat along the stone wall.
The moan of the wind – path of anger –

28     from the south ruined me.’

Dafydd:
‘Is it the wind that caused this trouble of late?
It winnowed your roof well last night.
It horribly damaged your thatching-laths.

32     The world is always dangerously deceptive.
Your corner – two cries of realization are mine –
was a bed for me, not a pigsty.
Yesterday you were in a fine condition,

36     snug over my gentle dear.
Easy to argue, today you are,
by Peter, without rafter or roofing.
Many an event causes sudden madness.

40     Is this broken-down shack some sort of illusion?’

The Ruin:

‘A great deal of the household’s work has gone,
Dafydd, to the grave. It was a good way of life.’

Ruins of Brogynin, Dafydd’s house, c. 1890
Much of the structure is much later than Dafydd.