I drew you all in with that title, but no! Fools! You thought you were going to get mindless, all-consuming fashion, instead you're going to get Medieval Anglo Saxon Poetry that is written in old english, although i won't torment you that much and give it to you in the original version.
'Weland knew exile among serpents,
The single-minded man pulled through hardship.
He had sorrow and longing as fellow travellers
On the winter-cold exile; he often discovered woe
After Nidhad placed him under restraint,
Supple bonds of sinew on a worthier man.
That passed over - this can too.
To Beadohild the death of her brothers
Was not as sorrowful as her own situation -
She had clearly realised
That she was pregnant. She could never
Confidently contemplate what should come out of that.
That passed over - this can too.
Many of us have heard about Mathilde:
Great embraces became an abyss,
So that the painful love deprived them of sleep.
That passed over - this can too.
The sorrowful anxious man sits, cut off from happiness,
Darkening in the mind, it seems to him
His share of hardship is endless.
He can consider then that throughout this world
The wise Lord often brings about change,
On many a man he bestows favour,
A particular prosperity on some share of woe.
I will say this about myself,
That for a time I was poet of the Heodenings
Dear to my Lord; Dior was my name.
For many years I had a good post,
A loyal Lord - until now: Heorrenda,
The man skilful in song, has got the revenues
That the protector of men earlier gave me.
That passed over - this can too.'
What do i love about this poem?
Well, the nerd in me first of all loves all the allusions to other epics of the middle ages. Weland in the first stanza is the speaker/author (?) of a piece of norse mythological epic poem regarding a trio of swan maidens and their princely lovers, as well as the subsequent ill fate that befalls them when an angry father and curse is thrown in. Beowulf, another slightly more famous (ever since Angelina Jolie graced the mother with her presence) epic is also mentioned, as are many more.
An interesting aside about the epic is that it is a genre that exists as an idealised, absolute past, untouchable and unchangeable, and yet also wholly better and more incredible than our own time. It is deeply rooted in tradition, and exists as a sort of tangible expression of cultural, and often mythical, tradition. Think the epic poems of Homer (the Illiad and the Odyssey) as well as the various Roman poets who followed him, Virgil. The Epic Poem is often very hard to conquer, but so charming in its complete belief in its own perfection. I do love reading about Odysseus' adventures described in the same way every time: Cunning Odysseus, Sincere Telemachus, even inanimate objects have epithets: 'rosy-fingered dawn'.
But the other thing i love even more about this is the sense of poetic melancholy twinged with hope that ends each stanza. 'That passed over - this can too.' Especially the last one, which follows a stanza about the poet himself, who once was the poet in residence of the Heodenings court in East Anglia but was ousted by another poet, and now has no job.
Poetry is notorious for drawing on the individual's sorrows as artistic fuel. But the majority of this comes from heartbreak and romantic tragedy. There are few poems for whom the main source of despair is the loss of a job. Perhaps a fitting sentiment given our times, then?
Credit crunch? Well, they had one in the great Depression.
That passed over - this can too.
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