A Poetry Sporadical of Repeating Forms
A Poetry Sporadical of Repeating Forms
Wayland tasted the tang of exile.
Single-hearted, he suffered hardship,
care and longing his close companions
and bitter cold. Bad luck caught him
when Nithhad reined him in supple restraints,
bound him by his sinews, the better man.
That sorrow ended. So might this.
To Beadohild, her brothers’ dying
was a duller ache than her own ills,
now clear and chilling: swollen with child
she could never be calm about what would come,
not even a moment easy in mind.
That sorrow ended. So might this.
Concerning Hild, we have heard it told
how the Geat burned for her past all bounds
love-pangs stealing his sleep away.
That sorrow ended. So might this.
Theodric’s rule— his thirty-years
in the Maerings’ stronghold, storied and sung—
That sorrow ended. So might this.
And Eormanric, with his wolfish reason—
we’ve learned his lore, how he lorded it over
the land of the Goths. A grim king, that one.
Many a warrior, mired in weariness,
often wished it, awaiting the worst,
that defeat would come to his own country.
That sorrow ended. So might this.
Wrung out with sadness, a man will sit
sapped of delight, his soul darkened.
His share of evil seems to him endless.
He might then wonder that all through the world
a wise Lord wills such changes,
to some men bringing the brightness of honor,
to others dealing a dole of woe.
And this I mean to say for myself:
how once I held among the Heodenings
the place of a poet, beloved of my patron.
I was called Deor, and dear to a lord
who gave me good work through winter on winter
till he—Heorrend, skillful with songs—
took them over, the titles to lands
that the guardian of men had given to me.
That sorrow ended. So might this.
Maryann Corbett lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. She is the author of two chapbooks, Dissonance (Scienter Press, forthcoming) and Gardening in a Time of War (Pudding House, 2007), and was a co-winner of the 2009 Willis Barnstone Translation Prize.