A new recording of this for the new album https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/peacocks-tales-the-sapphire-wedding-album
Belle ami, si est de nous, ne vous sans moi, ni moi sans vous.
Let them play at boyish games round
A table. Though walled up, bound,
In an unpublished garden, stone
Tower with window, all alone,
This court still revolves around me.
I twist them all round my pretty
Little finger, a studded ring:
The champion knight, the poor king,
Modred, Gawain, my Lancelot.
It’s the only power I know.
Who waits… and do not wait to see
The object of his worship pass,
Wasted, into this looking glass,
Wheat-hair, rose-lips, unsown, should he
Choose to deny himself – and me.
He comes through enchanted forests,
Rough-horses, haunted castles, mists;
From slaying giants, big bad knights:
Barons with feudal appetites;
Impossible quests for Our Lady,
Sowing wild seeds Love meant for me;
Obsessed so with courtly sin and
Confession – Indulgence’s twin;
Greets Artos, old friend – clash of mail
(So grieved his crown still lacks a graal,
So tedious!) He comes to me
Who waits… and do not wait to see
The object of his worship pass,
Wasted, into this looking glass,
Wheat-hair, rose-lips, unsown, should he
Choose to deny himself – and me.
© Gareth Calway 1991
Let them play at boyish games round
A table. Though walled up, bound,
In an unpublished garden, stone
Tower with window, all alone,
This court still revolves around me.
I twist them all round my pretty
Little finger, a studded ring:
The champion knight, the poor king,
Modred, Gawain, my Lancelot.
It’s the only power I know.
Who waits… and do not wait to see
The object of his worship pass,
Wasted, into this looking glass,
Wheat-hair, rose-lips, unsown, should he
Choose to deny himself – and me.
He comes through enchanted forests,
Rough-horses, haunted castles, mists;
From slaying giants, big bad knights:
Barons with feudal appetites;
Impossible quests for Our Lady,
Sowing wild seeds Love meant for me;
Obsessed so with courtly sin and
Confession – Indulgence’s twin;
Greets Artos, old friend – clash of mail
(So grieved his crown still lacks a graal,
So tedious!) He comes to me
Who waits… and do not wait to see
The object of his worship pass,
Wasted, into this looking glass,
Wheat-hair, rose-lips, unsown, should he
Choose to deny himself – and me.
© Gareth Calway 1991
credits
This Guinevere lyric is written in imitation of the French romance verse form (octosyllabic couplets giving a lighter, faster feel than the English iambic pentameter) and evokes the medieval Guinevere of the troubadours of Provence rather than the Gwenhwyfar of Celtic myths and of Dark Age history. We wanted this Guinevere to sound contemporary and confident, chipping against the beat of the courtly love tradition in which she was a love object rather than a love subject.
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