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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

EL GAI SABER (CHANT ROYAL) by FRANK WILMOT

First Line: TEACH ME TO BLEAT BALLADES? HAVE I NOT THROWN
Last Line: FOUND LOWLY WISDOM NEVER FOUND IN BOOKS!
Subject(s): WISDOM;
TEACH me to bleat ballades? Have I not thrown
Fits for the fawning sonneteers who owed
Subsistence to their monarch? Though I've sown
Harvests for barons, I have never bowed
Nor curbed my rugged utterance for the king.
Petrarch, Bertran of Born, all ye that cling
To Art's oppressive manner, start the shy
Love passion for a courtly hue-and-cry.
Ye babblers in slashed hose of babbling brooks
How could your prim sestinas ever vie
With lowly wisdom never found in books?

The rags of life hang heavy on the bone,
There's blood upon the dust along the road
Where I have stumbled, and the very stone
Tears at me when I stagger with my load.
The leathern-wristed lord goes falconing,
And what cares he for the rude songs I fling
Out of my mirthless soul? He loves the sly
Rhyme-conjurers who tickle words and die.
We are immortal; damn their scornful looks!
Royal, immortal, we who glorify
The lowly wisdom never found in books.

Songs of my people, your uncourtly tone
Is drawn from mother-rhymes and the grim goad
Of poverty -- the chained hound's kennel moan.
And must I find a jewel in the toad?
Unto my lord a churl's obeisance bring
And charm his ennui with sweet ballading?
Or soil my churlish music with the sigh
Of some dame grieving that her cheeks are dry?
No! I shall sing the beggars and the cooks,
And learn, where slatterns kiss and pantlers pry,
The lowly wisdom never found in books.

Taunt me for lacking arts I should have known!
I have known hunger well, and death's abode;
Therefore, I sing the habits of my own
In troubled light that simple vision showed.
The belted baron, lording everything,
Shall not command me courteously to sing
To pretty musics with such grace whereby
I shall put tears upon his lady's eye,
And ballad while she simpers 'mid the dukes.
Their courtly lore would lead dear Christ awry;
O! lowly wisdom, never found in books!

When I walked out I always walked alone,
And when I sang I sang as my love flowed;
Could I have tuned my folk-songs to his drone,
And followed with his clowns when my lord rode
Abroad to ceremonial tourneying?
Brown squirrels scamper joyfully, the wing
Of a scared robin brushes past: the high
Mountains have torn their cloud-wreaths from the sky;
There swoop the eagles, quarrel here the rooks;
All these spell faith and the full sanctity
Of lowly wisdom never found in books.

See, here's an extra stanza; Poets, I loan
Your regal chant to curse in. I explode
My venom over dolts whose wits have grown
Too thick to comprehend a deeper mode!
Go, preen the quills for your lord's welcoming
And when you bow obeisance, may he wring
Your dirty necks, and toss you to the sty
(Which God alone knows how you left and why),
And there you'll learn, plucked from your ingle nooks,
That none may without penalty deny
The lowly wisdom never found in books.

Envoi

Majestic maggots! Peers of verse who ply
A delicate trade of satined symmetry!
O preening peacocks, I sing pruning hooks!
I went with God among the ditchers -- I
Found lowly wisdom never found in books!



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