Dannie Abse
A Welsh Peace Offering
My dear felonious invective swine,
though you have often boggled me,
though I am a bard and you a mere jongleur,
I am mindful of this holy season.
I doubt if you are familiar with the story
of the two 14th century poets,
Dafydd ap Rhys and Hywel ab Ifan
who did not wish each other well.
Dafydd scorned mead-boozed Hywel’s clichés.
Hywel sneered, ‘Dafydd has two duff ears.’
Each recommended the other’s verses:
‘A cure certain for insomnia.’
But when one was told the other had died,
by Ieuan of the drooping eyelids (ptosis),
inveterate windbag and practical joker,
both hurried home to swank their best black.
Dafydd composed a seventy line cywydd
in honour of Hywel and the Nation’s loss:
‘Dead, dead, our master of the perfect metre.
Ashes, ashes, that blazing fire of a man.’
Hywel, too, played weeping harp notes in praise
of Dafydd, matchless poet, ‘O how his lyrics
harmoniously soar, bible-beautiful.
An eagle’s feather he did write with.’
Hoaxed terribly they were but stirred by
each other’s buttered obituary
they became true friends, close as two sides
of a sandwich – as I hope we shall be.
Still I have to tell you (must be honest)
that your voice resembles an idiot tin can
animated by a relentless wind scraping
and bucketing across the road to Builth.
No matter, it’s in the genes, can’t be helped.
Now I send this instead of a Xmas card
confident discord between us will cease.
Page(s) 48-49
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