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I
A Perigord, pres del muralh tan que i puosch ’om gitar ab malh.
YOU’D have men’s hearts up from the dust | |
| And tell their secrets, Messire Cino, | |
| Right enough? Then read between the lines of Uc St. Cire, | |
| Solve me the riddle, for you know the tale. | |
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| Bertrans, En Bertrans, left a fine canzone: | 5 |
| “Maent, I love you, you have turned me out. | |
| The voice at Montfort, Lady Agnes’ hair, | |
| Bel Miral’s stature, the vicountess’ throat, | |
| Set all together, are not worthy of you …” | |
| And all the while you sing out that canzone, | 10 |
| Think you that Maent lived at Montaignac, | |
| One at Chalais, another at Malemort | |
| Hard over Brive—for every lady a castle, | |
| Each place strong. | |
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| Oh, is it easy enough? | 15 |
| Tairiran held hall in Montaignac, | |
| His brother-in-law was all there was of power | |
| In Perigord, and this good union | |
| Gobbled all the land and held it later | |
| for some hundreds years. | 20 |
| And our En Bertrans was in Altafort, | |
| Hub of the wheel, the stirrer-up of strife, | |
| As caught by Dante in the last wallow of hell— | |
| The headless trunk “that made its head a lamp,” | |
| For separation wrought out separation, | 25 |
| And he who set the strife between brother and brother | |
| And had his way with the old English king, | |
| Viced in such torture for the “counterpass.” | |
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| How would you live, with neighbors set about you— | |
| Poictiers and Brive, untaken Rochechouart, | 30 |
| Spread like the finger-tips of one frail hand; | |
| And you on that great mountain of a palm— | |
| Not a neat ledge, not Foix between its streams, | |
| But one huge back half covered up with pine, | |
| Worked for and snatched from the string-purse of Born— | 35 |
| The four round towers, four brothers—mostly fools: | |
| What could he do but play the desperate chess, | |
| And stir old grudges? | |
| “Pawn your castles, lords! | |
| Let the Jews pay.” | 40 |
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| And the great scene— | |
| (That, maybe, never happened!) | |
| Beaten at last, | |
| Before the hard old king: | |
| “Your son, ah, since he died | 45 |
| My wit and worth are cobwebs brushed aside | |
| In the full flare of grief. Do what you will.” | |
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| Take the whole man, and ravel out the story. | |
| He loved this lady in castle Montaignac? | |
| The castle flanked him—he had need of it. | 50 |
| You read today, how long the overlords of Perigord, | |
| The Talleyrands, have held the place, it was no transient fiction. | |
| And Maent failed him? Or saw through the scheme? | |
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| And all his net-like thought of new alliance? | |
| Chalais is high, a-level with the poplars. | 55 |
| Its lowest stones just meet the valley tips | |
| Where the low Dronne is filled with water-lilies. | |
| And Rochecouart can match it, stronger yet, | |
| The very spur’s end, built on sheerest cliff, | |
| And Malemort keeps its close hold on Brive, | 60 |
| While Born his own close purse, his rabbit warren, | |
| His subterranean chamber with a dozen doors, | |
| A-bristle with antennae to feel roads, | |
| To sniff the traffic into Perigord. | |
| And that hard phalanx, that unbroken line, | 65 |
| The ten good miles from thence to Maent’s castle, | |
| All of his flank—how could he do without her? | |
| And all the road to Cahors, to Toulouse? | |
| What would he do without her? | |
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| “Papiol, | 70 |
| Go forthright singing—Anhes, Cembelins. | |
| There is a throat; ah, there are two white hands; | |
| There is a trellis full of early roses, | |
| And all my heart is bound about with love. | |
| Where am I come with compound flatteries— | 75 |
| What doors are open to fine compliment?” | |
| And every one half jealous of Maent? | |
| He wrote the catch to pit their jealousies | |
| Against her, give her pride in them? | |
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| Take his own speech, make what you will of it— | 80 |
| And still the knot, the first knot, of Maent? | |
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| Is it a love poem? Did he sing of war? | |
| Is it an intrigue to run subtly out, | |
| Born of a jongleur’s tongue, freely to pass | |
| Up and about and in and out the land, | 85 |
| Mark him a craftsman and a strategist? | |
| (St. Leider had done as much at Polhonac, | |
| Singing a different stave, as closely hidden.) | |
| Oh, there is precedent, legal tradition, | |
| To sing one thing when your song means another, | 90 |
| “Et albirar ab lor bordon—” | |
| Foix’ count knew that. What is Sir Bertrans’ singing? | |
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| Maent, Maent, and yet again Maent, | |
| Or war and broken heaumes and politics? | |
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II End fact. Try fiction. Let us say we see | 95 |
| En Bertrans, a tower-room at Hautefort, | |
| Sunset, the ribbon-like road lies, in red cross-light, | |
| South toward Montaignac, and he bends at a table | |
| Scribbling, swearing between his teeth, by his left hand | |
| Lie little strips of parchment covered over, | 100 |
| Scratched and erased with al and ochaisos. | |
| Testing his list of rhymes, a lean man? Bilious? | |
| With a red straggling beard? | |
| And the green cat’s-eye lifts toward Montaignac. | |
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| Or take his “magnet” singer setting out, | 105 |
| Dodging his way past Aubeterre, singing at Chalais | |
| In the vaulted hall, | |
| Or, by a lichened tree at Rochecouart | |
| Aimlessly watching a hawk above the valleys, | |
| Waiting his turn in the mid-summer evening, | 110 |
| Thinking of Aelis, whom he loved heart and soul … | |
| To find her half alone, Montfort away, | |
| And a brown, placid, hated woman visiting her, | |
| Spoiling his visit, with a year before the next one. | |
| Little enough? | 115 |
| Or carry him forward. “Go through all the courts, | |
| My Magnet,” Bertrand had said. | |
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| We come to Ventadour | |
| In the mid love court, he sings out the canzon, | |
| No one hears save Arrimon Luc D’Esparo— | 120 |
| No one hears aught save the gracious sound of compliments. | |
| Sir Arrimon counts on his fingers, Montfort, | |
| Rochecouart, Chalais, the rest, the tactic, | |
| Malemort, guesses beneath, sends word to Coeur de Lion: | |
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| The compact, de Born smoked out, trees felled | 125 |
| About his castle, cattle driven out! | |
| Or no one sees it, and En Bertrans prospered? | |
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| And ten years after, or twenty, as you will, | |
| Arnaut and Richard lodge beneath Chalus: | |
| The dull round towers encroaching on the field, | 130 |
| The tents tight drawn, horses at tether | |
| Further and out of reach, the purple night, | |
| The crackling of small fires, the bannerets, | |
| The lazy leopards on the largest banner, | |
| Stray gleams on hanging mail, an armorer’s torch-flare | 135 |
| Melting on steel. | |
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| And in the quietest space | |
| They probe old scandals, say de Born is dead; | |
| And we’ve the gossip (skipped six hundred years). | |
| Richard shall die tomorrow—leave him there | 140 |
| Talking of trobar clus with Daniel. | |
| And the “best craftsman” sings out his friend’s song, | |
| Envies its vigor … and deplores the technique, | |
| Dispraises his own skill?—That’s as you will. | |
| And they discuss the dead man, | 145 |
| Plantagenet puts the riddle: “Did he love her?” | |
| And Arnaut parries: “Did he love your sister? | |
| True, he has praised her, but in some opinion | |
| He wrote that praise only to show he had | |
| The favor of your party, had been well received.” | 150 |
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| “You knew the man.” | |
| “You knew the man.” | |
| “I am an artist, you have tried both métiers.” | |
| “You were born near him.” | |
| “Do we know our friends?” | 155 |
| “Say that he saw the castles, say that he loved Maent!” | |
| “Say that he loved her, does it solve the riddle?” | |
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| End the discussion, Richard goes out next day | |
| And gets a quarrel-bolt shot through his vizard, | |
| Pardons the bowman, dies. | 160 |
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| Ends our discussion. Arnaut ends | |
| “In sacred odor”—(that’s apochryphal!) | |
| And we can leave the talk till Dante writes: | |
| Surely I saw, and still before my eyes | |
| Goes on that headless trunk, that bears for light | 165 |
| Its own head swinging, gripped by the dead hair, | |
| And like a swinging lamp that says, “Ah me! | |
| I severed men, my head and heart | |
| Ye see here severed, my life’s counterpart.” | |
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| Or take En Bertrans? | 170 |
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III
Ed eran due in uno, ed uno in due. Inferno, XXVIII, 125.
I loved a woman. The stars fell from heaven. | |
| And always our two natures were in strife. | |
| Bewildering spring, and by the Auvezère | |
| Poppies and day’s-eyes in the green émail | |
| Rose over us; and we knew all that stream, | 175 |
| And our two horses had traced out the valleys; | |
| Knew the low flooded lands squared out with poplars, | |
| In the young days when the deep sky befriended. | |
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| And great wings beat above us in the twilight, | |
| And the great wheels in heaven | 180 |
| Bore us together … surging … and apart … | |
| Believing we should meet with lips and hands. | |
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| High, high and sure … and then the counterthrust: | |
| “Why do you love me? Will you always love me? | |
| But I am like the grass, I can not love you.” | 185 |
| Or, “Love, and I love and love you, | |
| And hate your mind, not you, your soul, your hands.” | |
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| So to this last estrangement, Tairiran! | |
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| There shut up in his castle, Tairiran’s, | |
| She who had nor ears nor tongue save in her hands, | 190 |
| Gone—ah, gone—untouched, unreachable! | |
| She who could never live save through one person, | |
| She who could never speak save to one person, | |
| And all the rest of her a shifting change, | |
| A broken bundle of mirrors…! | 195 |
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