Gwyneth Lewis: Two Poems

I Would if I Could

The boring sleeps!

Each day, at lunch,

Dad took a ten‑

Minute nap “to keep

The ball in the

Air.” He juggled

Fatigue. Woe betide

The child who

Woke him.

Better

To wait for

The world to

Restart.

Another story

When he was old,

Slipping into the quicksand

Of the day‑

Long doze:

“Remember! No matter

What time of day or night

You come,

Wake me straight away!

Do you promise?”

Gwyneth Lewis

Translated from Welsh by the author

Old Age

Judge Sisamnes was brought in front of his betters

For selling justice. Sentence: to be skinned.

I saw the Gerard David decades ago

In Bruges. I returned to it time and again

To see the details: how his scarlet coat

Was dropped in a pile under the table

While the workers cut his skin with care

Like opening an envelope. One undid

His breast’s buttons to show the red undershirt

Of his person. How one put a knife

Between his teeth white pulling, carefully at the skin

Of his legs, like a sock a little too tight.

As if a man’s skin should be shed. I returned

Again to scrutinize the leg’s burning underskin

Free of the dermis’s net, as nude

As the citizen’s eyes, as they watched in silence.

And I noticed the lap dog scratching a fleabite

With its back leg, hoping, perhaps, for a drop of blood

To lick. I stared at the soft leather shoe of the man on the right.

Sisamnes is groaning through his teeth, neck sinews

A rigging of pain. His executioners

Are craftsmen, working slowly to prevent tearing

The former judge’s thin skin. Like pulling a trout

From its armour. The air

Was like stinging nettles on his body’s wound.

Old age is a martyrdom. Now I watch my father

Struggling to walk as the skin on his soles

Is too thin—like mermaids’ feet! I know of others

Under the lash of that infidel, time—their tongues

Cut out, yet they live, understand. Others have broken legs,

Or hearts and survive or they’re in the baffling forest

Of dementia and counting their blessings.

When Sisamnes died, his son was set

To sit in the judge’s chair, that skin

Beneath him, leather. Each time

His subjects came before him for justice,

He burned on the throne of his shame.

Gwyneth Lewis

Translated from Welsh by the author