Daily Poetry

Poem 3: Deor, translated by Seamus Heaney

rsbevill

Weland the blade-winder     suffered woe.
That steadfast man     knew misery.
Sorrow and longing     walked beside him,
wintered in him,     kept wearing him down
after Nithad     hampered and restrained him,
lithe sinew-bonds     on the better man.
That passed over,     this can too.

For Beadohilde     her brother’s death
weighed less heavily     than her own heartsoreness
once it was clearly     understood
she was bearing a child.     Her ability
to think and decide     deserted her then.
That passed over,     this can too.

We have heard tell     of Mathilde’s laments,
the grief that afflicted     Geat’s wife.
Her love was her bane,     it banished sleep.
That passed over,     this can too.

For thirty winters–     it was common knowledge–
Theodric held     the Maerings’ fort.
That passed over,     this can too.

Earmonric     had the mind of a wolf,
by all accounts     a cruel king,
lord of the far flung     Gothic outlands.
Everywhere men sat     shackled in sorrow,
expecting the worst,     wishing often
he and his kingdom     would be conquered.
That passed over,     this can too.

A man sits mournful,     his mind in darkness,
so daunted in spirit     he deems himself
ever after     fated to endure.
He may think then     how throughout this world
the Lord in his wisdom     often works change–
meting out honor,     ongoing fame
to many, to others     only their distress.
Of myself, this much     I have to say:
for a time I was poet     of the Heoden people,
dear to my lord.     Deor was my name.
For years I enjoyed     my duties as minstrel
and that lord’s favor,     but now the freehold
and land titles     he bestowed upon me once
he has vested in Heorrenda,     master of verse-craft.
That passed over,     this can too.

Welund him be wurman      wræces cunnade,
anhydig eorl     earfoþa dreag,
hæfde him to gesiþþe     sorge and longaþ,
wintercealde wræce,     wean oft onfond
siþþan hine Niðhad on     nede legde,
swoncre seonobende     on syllan monn.
Þæs ofereode,     þisses swa mæg.

Beadohilde ne wæs     hyre broþra deaþ
on sefan swa sar     swa hyre sylfre þing,
þæt heo gearolice     ongietan hæfde
þæt heo eacen wæs;     æfre ne meahte
þriste geþencan     hu ymb þæt sceolde.
Þæs ofereode,     þisses swa mæg.

We þæt Mæðhilde      mone gefrugnon
wurdon grundlease     Geates frige,
þæt hi seo sorglufu     slæp ealle binom.
Þæs ofereode,     þisses swa mæg.

Ðeodric ahte      þritig wintra
Mæringa burg;     þæt wæs monegum cuþ.
Þæs ofereode,     þisses swa mæg.

We geascodan     Eormanrices
wylfenne geþoht;     ahte wide folc
Gotena rices;     þæt wæs grim cyning.
Sæt secg monig     sorgum gebunden,
wean on wenan,     wyscte geneahhe
þæt þæs cynerices     ofercumen wære.
Þæs ofereode,     þisses swa mæg.

Siteð sorgcearig,     sælum bidæled,
on sefan sweorceð,     sylfum þinceð
þæt sy endeleas     earfoða dæl,
mæg þonne geþencan     þæt geond þas woruld
witig Dryhten     wendeþ geneahhe,
eorle monegum     are gesceawað,
wislicne blæd,     sumum weana dæl.

Þæt ic bi me sylfum     secgan wille,
þæt ic hwile wæs     Heodeninga scop,
dryhtne dyre;     me wæs Deor noma.
Ahte ic fela wintra     folgað tilne,
holdne hlaford,     oþ þæt Heorrenda nu,
leoðcræftig monn,     londryht geþah
þæt me eorla hleo     ær gesealde.
Þæs ofereode,     þisses swa mæg.

Poem 2: Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins

rsbevill

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Test Poem: Marginalia by Billy Collins

rsbevill

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O’Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.

Other comments are more offhand, dismissive—
“Nonsense.” “Please!” “HA!!”—
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
who wrote “Don’t be a ninny”
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.

Students are more modest
needing to leave only their splayed footprints
along the shore of the page.
One scrawls “Metaphor” next to a stanza of Eliot’s.
Another notes the presence of “Irony”
fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.

Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
Hands cupped around their mouths.
“Absolutely,” they shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
“Yes.” “Bull’s-eye.” “My man!”
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
rain down along the sidelines.

And if you have managed to graduate from college
without ever having written “Man vs. Nature”
in a margin, perhaps now
is the time to take one step forward.

We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.

Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospels
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird singing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page—
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.

And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake’s furious scribbling.

Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents’ living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page

A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil—
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet—
“Pardon the egg salad stains, but I’m in love.”

Poem 45: Nothing is Lost by Noel Coward

rsbevill

Deep in our sub-conscious, we are told
Lie all our memories, lie all the notes
Of all the music we have ever heard
And all the phrases those we loved have spoken,
Sorrows and losses time has since consoled,
Family jokes, out-moded anecdotes
Each sentimental souvenir and token
Everything seen, experienced, each word
Addressed to us in infancy, before
Before we could even know or understand
The implications of our wonderland.
There they all are, the legendary lies
The birthday treats, the sights, the sounds, the tears
Forgotten debris of forgotten years
Waiting to be recalled, waiting to rise
Before our world dissolves before our eyes
Waiting for some small, intimate reminder,
A word, a tune, a known familiar scent
An echo from the past when, innocent,
We looked upon the present with delight
And doubted not the future would be kinder
And never knew the loneliness of night.

Digging by Seamus Heaney

rsbevill

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.