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Four hundred people are currently being prosecuted for refusing to submit their 2011 census forms. After the last census in 2001, only 38 people were proscuted. Victims of this process include an 82 year old man who has always been a pacifist, the Mayor of Stroud (a Quaker committed to a witness against war), a 56 year old woman who is too badly disabled to attend court, but objects to Lockheed Martin's armaments being used against Palestinian civilians, and many other pacifists and critics of Lockheed Martin's worldwide mission to peddle death. For anyone who missed my regular posts last year, I covered my census form with decorated post-it notes in (comparatively cowardly, compared with these folks) protest against the involvement of these monsters in administering our census, and I haven't received a summons. Lockheed Martin also kindly assist in interrogations at Guantanamo Bay, so who knows? Perhaps they are advising the prosecution lawyers as well.

It's quite simple: the days when the pacifist conscience was respected by law are over - and indeed, if you are not a pacifist, but you hate the idea of cluster bombs, your conscience could make you a criminal too.

This news comes at a time when it has just been revealed that ex-military personnel were conscripted by Margaret Thatcher's government into spying on organisations like the Peace Pledge Union (clearly a dangerous organisation, set up by a Vicar of St. Martin in the Fields, of which I am a member), and the CND. It appears also that our current government is going to give approval to a Free School in which all of the teaching staff are ex-soldiers, several of them unqualified. Two weeks ago, David Cameron, in his role as official pot-who-calls-the-kettle-black, told the Argentinians that they were being "colonialist" in their attitude to the Falklands - clearly demonstrating that he is yearning to emulate Thatcher over there too.

When people look at me blankly when I talk about the creeping militarisation of British society, I really do have to wonder if they ever pay attention to the news.

Details of the current prosecutions of conscientious objectors against a census run by an armaments manufacturer, which is happy doing business in both Britain and Bahrain, can be seen here:

network23.org/countmeout/court-updates/

If you missed out on my own rather pathetic little campaign against the brutes, you can see it all by scrolling back through my 'Political and Critical' set, to the right of this picture. There is some very interesting correspondence with a legal advisor to the Office of National Statistics, as well as a photographic record of what I did to my census form.

Lost in the Mist
Y Niwl

Last Thursday, when carousal
Seemed on the cards for a spell,
I was in luck: for I learned
She wanted an interlude
In the greenwood: good omen.
“Girl, I’ll tryst with you!” Amen.

No man under grace of God
Could have guessed how keen and glad
I was when Thursday came –
Joy at dawn – Dafydd, stay calm –
By God! She was well-endowed!
I went to the tryst, bedewed
To the waist – but a mist fell
Until I began to flail
Across the moor: like vellum
Unrolled by rain down the vale
Or the rust that clogs a sieve,
Bird snare on dark soil, salve
Of blackness upon the road,
Grey friar’s cowl that chokes the ground
Quilt to smother the whole sky.
I stared wildly, could not scry
A thing for inscrutable
Mist: earth contused by a bruise
Of greyness, gagging on smoke,
Drowned by fleece from a sheep’s back,
A twined hedge of almost-rain,
Chain-mail on the chest of ruin,
Wall of deceit, black as slag,
Spread cloak knitted out of shag,
Gwyn ap Nudd has wound the world
With skeins of night, and his wild
Hordes pile fortresses of cloud,
Scotch my torches with the cold:
All conjured to cheat a bard
Get him lost, and leave him blind.

A rope coiled about the world,
Net of cambric borne by wind
From a factory in France,
Sheet of spider’s web! Gwyn’ fierce
Face heaves out breathfuls of smoke
Till the dripping woods are slick
With it. Wolves howl. Annwfn’s witch
Spreads ointment. I’m left, poor wretch,
To stagger, wet, wroth, ashen,
While the wind whirls widdershins.

I’d rather trudge the moors by night
Than in a daytime mist. Bright
Stars gleam like candles, their flames
Dimly lighting the hunched forms
Of moorland. But in the mist,
Moon and stars are drowned in moist
Fathoms, the bard imprisoned,
Drugged by the spreading poison
Of dimness. Neither llatai nor poet
Make headway on the black peat –
And she’ll be gone, a dark frown
Shadowing her fine, fair brow.

Poem by Dafydd ap Gwilym, paraphrased by Giles Watson. This poem is very similar in theme and imagery to another attributed to Dafydd ap Gwilym, ‘The Enchanted Mist’ (first line “Oed â’m rhiain addfeindeg”). Dafydd’s authorship of the latter has been questioned, and it may be a fifteenth century imitation, but this poem is certainly part of the Dafydd ap Gwilym canon. It seems at least possible that ‘The Enchanted Mist’ is the work of a protégé, or perhaps even of Dafydd himself at an age when he was still honing his skills (the poems can be hard to date when they only survive in manuscripts scribed much later than the time of composition). Both poems portray a poet disorientated by mist whilst on his journey to a tryst, and significantly, both blame the rising of the mist on Gwyn ap Nudd, the leader of the spectral Furious Horde, Faerie Rade, or Wild Hunt: a supernatural event which was widely dreaded in the Middle Ages. His deeds are recorded in ‘Culhwch and Olwen’ from the Mabinogion, and also in a dialogue poem from the Black Book of Carmarthen.

A few years ago now, I paraphrased ‘The Enchanted Mist’. It can be seen here, but in those earlier paraphrases, I made less of an attempt to replicate Dafydd’s metre:

www.flickr.com/photos/29320962@N07/3146712209/in/set-7215...

One day, I will have to re-write these earlier efforts!

The picture shows Dragon Hill, near Uffington, on a snowy and misty day.

Needles in the Eye
Nodwyddau Serch

Although you gleam like Indeg,
My love’s a grief unending:
Nine years’ torment, tiresome load
A shackle on a strong lad.
Love is like a foster son
Who goads his good father on
To despair: a murderer,
A worthless, spoilt marauder.

All I gain from love, Morfudd,
Is a gift of maddening grief.
Every Sunday, and on feasts,
I follow you to church, fists
Clenched in anguish, pale-faced girl,
And there, like a glinting grail
You stand, and I, sentinel
Of sad, lovelorn lust, stand still,
My wide eyes compelled to grope
Your body, fast in its grip.

Sharp needles – a dozen, say –
Span my eyelids every day,
Pried open – tears like a lake –
So I am compelled to look.
Your golden form keeps them pressed
Open, needled wide apart,
And welling up from my fond
Heart, rheum in a flood
Overflows, my humours
Out of balance. Sad horrors
Assail me, and fond desire
Finds me floundering in despair.
Gall swells up and grips my throat:
Girl, you give it not a thought,
And like battle-blood, my tears
Well up fast, and stain my beard.

Though I stay to hear a psalm
On Sunday, it’s your bright, slim
Form I worship. Not all girls
Think me gormless. Your cruel guiles
Compel you, by love’s own laws:
Girl, relent, and make me yours!

Poem by Dafydd ap Gwilym, paraphrased by Giles Watson, 2012. One of Dafydd’s frankest admissions of outright lust – and they were not few and far between – this poem also employs one of his most arresting images. Indeg, according to the Welsh Triads, was one of King Arthur’s three concubines, and Dafydd refers to her in five separate poems as an ideal of feminine beauty. (Triad 57: See Rachel Bromwich, Trioedd Ynys Prydain, Cardiff, 2006, pp. 164 and 404-405.)

Love Like a Fowler
Yr Adarwr

The fowler, after a frost,
Or flurries of snow, comes first
Along the path, setting traps
Where the moon shines on hilltops.
His honeydew and coltsfoot
He blends, like a cruel craftsman,
And smears glue of mistletoe
On twigs above the melt-flow,
And birds come from distant shores
To Môn. Suffering is sure.

A bird looks down, flying free
Above the grey estuary,
And comes to land, bright with glee,
But finds its plumes glazed in glue.
It writhes: is limed more firmly,
And dies, prey to the fowler.

Likewise God, king of what lives,
Is the cruel fowler of loves.
Hillside snow is a girl’s face:
A fine blizzard, white and fierce.
The melt-waters are the tears
Of my Eigr, who betrays
My troth, her eyes like berries,
Jewels of Christ. Her treason brews
A hundred sighs. Close, you eyes –
Snap shut like brooches. No more lies!
She loves me not, but limes me,
Her smile, a glue that slimes me
Into silence, yet my love
Will not leave me, while I live,
But plague my mind, keep it drunk
Till it is consumed by dark.
I sing her colours – bold bard –
And finish like a limed bird.

Love is a trap: lures the mind
To lingering death. It’s murder.
Her eyebrows are the twigs, slimed
By plucking into fine, slim
Lines. Lashes flutter: blackbirds’
Wings. Her eyelids close like blinds,
Or clouds, blacking out the love,
And leaving me half alive,
Nailed in place, limb upon limb:
Love’s memories cling like lime.

Poem by Dafudd ap Gwilym, paraphrased by Giles Watson, 2011. The cruel practice of bird-liming (still, unfortunately, prevalent in some European countries, and a great peril to migrating birds) involves the smearing of twigs with a sticky substance, often derived from the mucilage in plants such as coltsfoot and mistletoe. When birds alight on a branch, they find themselves stuck to it, and in their struggles, ensnare themselves still more as their feathers come in contact with the ‘glue’. Shakespeare would later put the metaphor of the ‘limed soul’ into the mouth of Claudius – a man cut off forever from repentance and salvation because his own wife was once married to the man he murdered – but Dafydd had used the analogy two centuries earlier.

Englynion: Lament for Greying Hair
Englynion Bardd i’w Wallt

This very day, my mirror showed – how grim
Is the way life fades – a shred
Of sad grey hair. Oh! It stirred
Grief! How sneakily it appeared!

My blond locks have been augmented – how vexing –
Youthful memory won’t mend it –
With growths of grey. What made it
Lovely – colour – now mars it.

The glass was flawless, not lying – too harsh
Its taunting. Now, fear’s cloying
Finger grips me: white hair filling
Me with memory’s coloured longing.

It was copious and gold – my hair –
Fine sight, it made me glad.
Now, my hopeful heart is ground
Between stones. Grey age has gained.

Colour in my locks: a bloom short lived.
It withers quickly. I blame
Nature. There is no bright balm
Can bring back that clear blond gleam.

Once, I wore a yellow veil – like gold –
Fine sight. Consonants and vowels
Are useless. The glass reveals
Aged hair: ugly, grey. Vile!

Poem by Dafydd ap Gwilym, paraphrased by Giles Watson, 2012. This sequence of englynion is one of several pieces of evidence which suggest that Dafydd survived at least the initial outbreaks of the Black Death and lived into old age, at least by fourteenth century standards (another is a poem in which he laments the effects of age on his beloved Morfudd). It also bears comparison with ‘The Mirror’ – a poem in which the sense of self-irony is delivered with a lighter touch. All of Dafydd's poetry makes frequent use of sangiadau, or parenthetical phrases. In this paraphrase, I have retained these more faithfully than usual, partly because the englyn verse form requires it, with its subordinate clause at the end of each first line, and partly also because it seems to suit the subject.

My paraphrase of 'The Mirror' is here:

www.flickr.com/photos/29320962@N07/3150728700/in/set-7215...

... and a reading of it is here:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqQhuPyvxbg

Vanity compels me to admit that I have deliberately done everything I can to harness Flickr's 'Picknic' programme (soon to die its own death, I hear) in order to make myself look as old as possible...