Greetings, my friends!
I meant to post nearly two weeks ago now, but was interrupted and, regrettably, forgot to return and post what I had intended! My apologies for the omission.
The poem I have selected for today is, I believe, in the spirit of St. Valentine's Day, though not in the Hallmark sense. Rather, I take it to be more in the spirit of faith, sacrifice, and martyrdom - after all, St. Valentine was such a one, and the true love he exemplified (and which can also be seen in all loves: married, dating, or simply the love between friends) must of necessity be sacrificial love if it is to be in any sense real. (I will spare you the rest of my theological-philosophical treatise on the nature of human and divine love here, but I do hope I can, with today's poem, and the encounter between Christian and pagan faiths contained therein, point very vaguely towards some degree of this love.)
One last note before I let you keep reading: in this poem I dabble a bit in the use of a device of old Norse poetry known as the "kenning." Kennings are endless fascinating, in my undoubtedly correct opinion, and if you are curious you can gain a basic knowledge of them HERE.
Enjoy & God bless!
+JMJ
Bjorn
By Caitlin Clancy
Copyright 2014
They came from the doors
Of the deathless realm
And salted our fields behind
Grey smoke wafts about
The mist-shrouded helm –
A new scar upon a young mind
The dragon-head rocks
Like the world we lost
Like the home-hearths they broke and burned
Too late did we look
Through the piercing frost
Our lesson by fire would be learned
Red ripples brush my stiff shoulders
Green folds blow, wave-wrap my waist
God’s tears drench down from the Heavens
Would that my word had been ‘haste!’
Black haze belonged to that morning
And bronze-heat consumed the fast night
To long lay the day in their trusses
To short sped our trial and flight
The strike of the cold on my temples
The taste of the newcomer’s scent
Surely the Temple was gladder,
When God’s own high garments it rent!
Leaning on pine-hewn post-prison
Fast-tied hands begging for help
But none here will heed Supplication
Unless for to drown it a whelp
In chains for cold priestly silver,
Bound tight for beloved Freyja’s tears
Sword-sleep
strewn about like the ashes
The sun hewn down by Thor’s spears
A sigh escapes the prisoner
The dark boy turns to read
He finds her face is open
Unmarked save fear and need
Whate’er he sees her hiding
His own lips do conceal
Perhaps after long waiting
Her fresh-made wound will heal
His hard thoughts fight inside him
His feeder-of-raven
heart
Begins to learn the question
That makes all lordly art
But ignorance is blinding
And he has none to tell
The wound-hoe
at his side
Has marked the world as fell
Brown hide of Gunnr’s horse
Dark eyes breed black hist’ry
Which ash fires still keep warm
The west is caught
In the slumber-storm of night
The helmsman nods upon his oar
And stirs to keep them right
The winter ices over them,
The tall mast and the side,
But still the boy looks onward
And thought, if she had died...
A flicker of the bane-of-wood
Wakes gently in his breast
Of sleep, food, home, her kinfolk –
Of all she is bereft
Dark windows to a lighter soul
Glance from prow to stern
None will see it, none will know,
But only one will learn
She shivers in the ice-blast
Enwrapping her soft form
Then sudden, light and tranquil –
Wolf-skin to keep life warm
She wakens and she wonders
She aches to turn her head
But sees nothing save starlight
From eyes long dry and red
A sigh once more
And then a tear
And then the world is gone
Her white neck arching slowly,
Head drooping like a fawn
Breathes away
And blows to other lands
Wanderers bearing precious hoards
And girls with gentle hands
Beneath the prow
New warrior’s heart
Bleeds like the birds he slew
Dark eyes give out cold burning drops
Faces flicker in the night
Children he never knew
He turns and then recoils –
His image in a shield
Was this, then, why he toiled?
For this broken, blemished yield?
Hard hands unloose the woven belt
‘Round ancient, sterner sword
A clatter strikes upon the deck
Of steel and broken cord –
Repulsed his one day’s hist’ry,
He inhales the life restored,
And in that still salt darkness
He made a girl his lord.
