The Ruin: A Fresh Translation

I've always loved "The Ruin," a damaged Anglo-Saxon poem from the Exeter Book. I had occasion to revisit it in April 2021, and I decided to translate it again, for my own pleasure and to help me think through some writing I was doing for The Lost Tales of Sir Galahad. I share it here in hopes that it may amuse and/or edify you.

You can see the original Anglo-Saxon and a different translation of it at this wikipedia page.

Jewel-like is this wallstone,    Fate-broken.
The castle burst;    its giant-work crumbles.
Roofs have fallen,    towers lie in ruin.
The frostgate is riven,     rime on lime,
The storm-refuge in shards,    shorn to disaster,
Eaten from beneath by age.    Earth’s grip holds
The castle’s mighty makers,    withered and gone.
Soil's hard grasp will hold them    until a hundred generations
Of mankind have passed.    Oft this wall endured,
Lichen-grey and red of hue,    in one kingdom after another;
It held up under storms:    Steep, lofty, lost.
It crumbles still, the ...s heaped up
Abide...
Grimly ground ...
... shone, they ...
... clever work, ancient ...
... a ring of dried mud ...
mind ... swift, crafty,
Determined in rings,    bound the high roof
A wire-helmed wall,    ingeniously joined.
Bright were the castle-halls,    many bath-houses,
High treasure-horns,    great troop-sounds,
Many meadhalls,    full of men's joy,
Until that was turned    severely by Fate.
The battle-felled ranged wide,    the pestilence-days came.
Death carried off    rough and ready swordsmen;
Their battlegrounds    became abandoned wastes.
The castle crumbled;    its repairers themselves crumpled to the ground.
Thus, these houses    have collapsed,
And the red arch    is sundered from the tiles,
The pillared-vault's roof.    It has all collapsed,
Broken to bits,    where many a warrior,
Glad-minded and gold-bright,    gleamingly adorned,
Proud and wine-brave,    shone in battle-array.
He looked at loot,    at silver, at stunning gems,
At wealth, at possessions,    at goblet-stones,
At the bright fortress    of a broad kingdom.
The stonecastle stood,    streams brought heat,
A wide spring.    A wall surrounded it all,
Its bright bosom,    where the baths were,
Hot in its heart.    That was convenient.
They let it out...
Over grey stone    the hot streams 
Un- ...
... that ring-pool    hot...
... where the baths were ...
Then is ... 
...-re;    That is a kingly thing
How the ... castle ...

Songbird

Winter is somber beneath grey skies,
Autumn mouldering in scattered leafpiles,
Summer's ember a mere memory,
Spring a songbird long flown south.

Sheol opens his mouth and closes his eyes,
So the dead earth comes as no surprise
Here in December's darkling days,
When life's dim flame is guttering out.

The year's last sharp moonsliver
Is smothered by cloudwisps
Here in the last, darkest hour
Before the final dawn.

Wind whips anything it can,
Driving the enduring chill
Down through skin, down through bone,
Down, down, down to the depths.

It is hard to remember the songbird's breath
Here in a land of cold, dark death,
But her return does not depend
Upon our belief or remembrances.

Make no mistake: She will return.
As surely as the dancing spheres
Bring dawn and winter's end,
We will hear birdsong again.

Afterdeath

I wait in the parking lot
Until I can finish sobbing along
To songs about the Resurrection,
Then walk through the parking lot,
Admiring the waning blue moon
As she wanes on the western horizon --
We will not see another such for years --
And go inside to numb my fresh grief
Among orderly lines of code.

(My friend, Father Thomas McKenzie, died yesterday in a car crash on I-40 west of Nashville. I hope to meet him again when the earth is remade by its glorious Redeemer.)

The Wild Hunt

I believe in the Wild Hunt
On this longest night of the year
When wolves howl at a never-setting moon
And it seems Sun has succumbed
To a long diminution
And the enduring chill pierces
To my very joints and marrow.

Odin rides forth with his hell-hounds,
And woe betide the mortal in their path!
They thirst for innocent souls,
Through endless night they hunt,
Transforming moon to blood,
Blacking out the very stars
By their grim and hungry passing.

And yet on this midwinter's night
I believe not in Odin's Wild Hunt,
But that of a more ancient god,
One who seeks souls with a fiercer hunger,
Who set out on an impossible raid, risking all
To plunder the hoard of Death itself
And win forth into the dawn of an undefeated Sun.

Starlight from the Night-Cloud

Note: This is a poem I curated by feeding the first two lines of T. S. Eliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" into the GPT-2 text generator at https://talktotransformer.com/, selecting the best output, and then feeding more lines in for auto-completion. Not bad for a robot!

Starlight from the Night-Cloud
A. I. Eliot

The red-bed sparrows flutter on the gray windowpanes
Just over the churchyard wall
The twinkling stars flow across the cold dusk
amidst the rose-colored smile of the autumn night
Light and dark, hope and despair,
grace and frolicking triumph and affliction,
death and life all with their cherubic faces
spun into another world -- into another world,
the leaves are falling, and the birds have fled to their holes
and the deep shadows from the chalets lie upon the grass
and the starlight shines from the clear night-cloud;
the sound of the love-songs from the hills echoes to and fro
and the high hopes of many voices who have yet to be heard;
There is a tumult of people and a multiplicity of voices;
And they are dancing.

Meet me

Meet me
in the quiet of the morning
in the red teakettle
in the candle lit against darkness
in the water and the Word
in the bread and the cup

A Prayer Before Debugging

Almighty Mender
Who works order from chaos,
Who delights
In making broken things new,
Be my Wisdom this day.
Reveal to me the source
Of this problem that preoccupies me,
This error unseen
And unforeseen,
The subtle bug
That wrenched my best-laid plans
Utterly out of joint.

Remind me,
O my Peace,
That I am dust and ashes.
You can accomplish all things
In a single master-stroke;
I cannot.
Let me sit with these truths
And be satisfied --
Even delighted --
In them.

Deliver me from
Pride,
Despair,
Frustration,
From an irritation
That lashes out in anger.
May the grace of my Savior
Overflow from my mind,
My lips,
My hands,
As I interact with others
Who also bear Your image,
Others for whom You paid
The same unspeakable price.

May I move slowly
And thoughtfully today,
Taking small steps
With wide eyes
As I ask, seek,
And knock my way through
This troublesome bit of code.
May I persevere in faith,
Following in Your footsteps,
O Great Redeemer of all things,
Remembering
That those who ask shall receive,
Those who seek shall find,
And those who knock
Shall see doors opened.

Photo Credit

Advent: Arrival

The newborn king, heralded by angel armies,
Lay without pomp or ceremony
In a feedbox, surrounded by scents
Of hay and dust and manure,
Cattle and afterbirth and blood.

Israel’s Great Shepherd was greeted
Not by her high and holy ones,
But by a band of literal shepherds,
Smelly and earthy and common,
Full of faith and wonder and praise.

The king’s virginal mother sat nearby,
Grateful to be far from Nazareth
And the vicious whispers of neighbors.
She smiled at the shepherds’ amazement;
She, too, had known angel-awe.

Her husband, discreet and righteous,
Quietly rearranged her bed,
Working to provide more comfort
For the wife who was his
And the child who wasn’t.

Thus the Maker came to live
Among creatures He had formed,
And He shared their form:
Tiny, helpless, humble, poor, weakness born
To shame the things the World prized most.

Cross-Posted at the Mustard Seed Conspiracy

Photo Credit

Advent: Reclamation

His smile was grim as he looked over the land:
Thickets of plum and honey locust twined with poison ivy,
Clearings all but choked with thistles, weeds, and vines.

He was old enough to remember when this was a vineyard,
Renowned around the world for its fine wines, subtle yet robust,
And now a family of raccoons resided under the ruined winepress.

The cistern had cracked. The spring that used to feed it
Burbled down the hill now, giving life to other, less ungrateful, lands.
The soil, once rich and fertile, was now drought-dry.

The grapevines had gone the way that wild grapevines go:
In every direction they could. They were prodigiously leafy
And all but fruitless. The few grapes they did have were tiny and bitter.

In short, it was a mess. But, like just about anything,
It could be salvaged, given enough time, tears, sweat, and blood.
He had loved this vineyard once, and it was in his heart to remake it.

He noticed a full-grown timber rattler sunning itself atop a fallen log
And made a mental note to have his son come down
And deal with it. Snakes would have no place in this vineyard.

It was a huge job, but he was unfazed. He had an abundance
Of time and strength and zeal. No matter the cost, he would accomplish this.
He turned to the nearest tree, unshouldered his ax, and started chopping.

Photo Credit

Advent: Vigil

It’s hard to keep watching for dawn
When all you can remember is darkness --
Deep, starless, enclouded darkness --
And Night itself has come for you,
A ravenous, slavering wolf,
Overpowering your last defenses,
Dragging you back to its lair,
Dismembering your best intentions,
Devouring your fondest dreams,
Your love, your joy, your peace,
Bite by soul-shredding bite.

It would take a miracle, you think,
For light to blaze up out of nowhere
And exorcise this darkness
From horizon to sun-kissed horizon,
To rescue you from this wolf’s den,
To restore your ravaged heart,
To resurrect your deadened hope.
But miracles don’t happen, you’re about to say
When an impossible light blazes forth,
Blinding and sudden,
Proving you gloriously wrong.

Cross-posted on The Mustard Seed Conspiracy's Advent devotional

Image Credit

daaaaad

sometimes i am a referee
trying to get small children
or arcane, byzantine tech stacks
to play together
nicely

breakme

On those all-too-short,
All-too-infrequent afternoons
When I find myself
Surfing waves of insight,
Drenched in sweet splashes
Of clean, steadily flowing code,
When I encounter distractions,
I drop this breadcrumb
Reminding myself to handle
A mundane or difficult detail
At some later point:

breakme

It has neither decorator nor punctuation,
No class, no ancestors, no descendants,
Nor, indeed,
any
syntactic
validity
whatsoever.

It is a placeholder chosen
For the express purpose
Of forcing my poor compiler to its knees.

It is the rusty length of rebar
Thrown into the gears
Of my carefully maintained machine,
The mandatory full stop
Designed to keep me
from forgetting.

Plowing

You harrowed my heart
like a baked-clay field
hardened by sun and weather
furrowed by unyielding blades
turned over in search
of the good fertile soil
the soil You knew
was there all along
softened and prepared
for spring planting
and--
unimaginably--
a bountiful harvest

III. Stars in the Universe

For Wes and Bailey

Here in Nashville, city lights dim the stars,

Edison’s electrical artifice

Obscuring the breathtaking grandeur

Of promises made a long time ago,

Sealed by galaxies far, far away.

Nonetheless, an unfathomable host 

Of unflinchingly faithful stars

Still testifies in silence,

If you know where to look

And how to see.

Try an Ozark hillside

On a clear winter night

When the moon has waned away

To nearly nothing

And inside a warm delivery room,

Strong and gentle hands

Comfort, uphold, protect, 

And tenderly birth into the world

A bloody, squirming, squealing miracle.

Or try the red-dust high desert

Of Navajo country, 

Where a man runs alone

From mesa to mesa, contemplating

His next idea for bending, shaping

Lifeless wood into a living, singing

Thing of beauty, 

Another weapon in the war he wages 

Against damnable darkness.

And if you still can’t see the stars

Go to an inviting space

Amid a crowd of strangers

Who feel like ancient kin

And listen to the songs of a man

Playing on a 12-string guitar

Songs of life and loveliness 

Wrested from the very maw of death.

(And be sure to have a piece 

Of sweet, tart, mouth-melting apple pie

If you can bring yourself to cut into

Its intricately adorned crust.)

Watch the stars carefully while you can,
For they all inevitably fade into obscurity...
But not forever.
Some glad morning, we'll see their glory

Born anew, as the elder stars foretold
When first they flooded light and life
Into our crooked, hurting world.

II. Per Aspera

From the moment he first drew breath

Through bluish infant lips

And let out a mighty wail 

Protesting the crushing pain

Of his journey into the world,

The cold cruelty of the open air 

After the enveloping embrace 

Of his mother’s womb,

I have loved him more than life.

I marveled at his first step,

Delighted myself in his baby laughter,

Wept for his broken bones, his broken heart,

Thanked the Maker for his strong body

And his clever mind.

And now that same Maker demands his life,

So I lay him on the rough stone altar --

My beloved, trusting, obedient son --

And pray in desperation 

That somehow death might be rendered harmless,

Fully eclipsed,

Swallowed up by life.

This is the price I paid for the stars

In all their galactic glory,

The swirling Milky Way,

The strong and silent Hunter, 

The Big and Little Bears:
I laid my dearest dream out to die

And wielded the knife myself.

I. First Light

In the beginning, they were flung

Into a million million galaxies,

Not haphazardly, but myriad points

Adorning an endless tapestry

Of time and space and matter,

A grandeur so complex, so vast 

That we often see it only

As sublime impersonal chaos.

The stellar dance of matter and mass,

Of fission and fusion,

Of flares and plasma

And perpetual nuclear explosions,

Hydrogen transforming into helium,

Burning through tons of matter

In a matter of moments,

Profligate as a prodigal

Whose father’s corpse has not yet cooled.

Herein lie deep secrets of creation.

Was this the power that intoxicated

The son of the morning

When he rose up to wage

His revolutionary war?

Did he begrudge the wastefulness

Of these universe-shaping forces

Harnessed for the viewing pleasure

Of tiny creatures

On a tiny planet

Far from the Center of things?

Death by Prairie

They fear and scorn our prairies:

“Kansas?” they say. 

“Watch out for Toto in a tornado!”

The Wizard of Oz jokes mask their fear and loathing,

A prairie-angst that dreads

Monotonous fields of corn and wheat, 

Soybeans and milo and wind turbines,

That is unsettled by the thought

Of a ravenous funnel-monster

Descending from the clouds,

Devouring all in its path.

I smile because I know

The prairie does want to kill us all.

But our Grim Reaper

Is likelier a deer than a twister.

Yesterday on the interstate,

I saw the deer-corpse first:

Bloody, shredded, fresh,
Tongue out and intestines splattered

Across the dotted white line;

I swerved around it.

Half a mile down the road, 

Ambulance lights flashed.

A trooper took a report

Near an SUV with out of state plates,

Its hood, bumper, windshield 

Caved in as if by some

Unseen malevolent monstrosity.

I breathed a silent prayer —

Christ, have mercy —

And continued along the highway 

Into the glorious orange-purple flames

Of the prairie sunset.

(Alternate title: Oh, Deer.)

Swimming

My love is a placid lake
Nestled deep in a mysterious forest.
I love to explore those woods,
To seek solace and delight
On sweaty July afternoons
In the cool refreshment
Of her fathomless depths.

The Magic Kingdom

Three decades later, his voice echoes in my heart:
Weary after a week of 14-hour days teaching algebra
But kind -- always so kind -- talking on the phone
With someone at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida.

"Good evening!" he says. Somehow the smile
On his sleep-deprived face spills over into his voice.
"Yes, I hope you can help me. I have a son with a dream,"
He continues, and squeezes my hand across the kitchen table.

He clicks his four-color pen to green and says,
"I need to know your rock-bottom admission price."
He writes numbers. His eyes grow wearier.
"I see. And do you offer any kind of family discount?"

The conversation goes on a few more minutes.
His smile remains, though diminished somehow,
And my heart begins to wonder if perhaps
My Mr. Fix-It may not come through this time.

"Well, thank you very much for your time,"
My father says. "You've certainly given me
A lot to think about." He stands with a muffled groan
(Sore from a day on his feet) and gently hangs up.

I am nine and have not known much disappointment,
But I'm also not stupid. My stomach tightens
Against my deepest fear: We can't go.
I ask anyway: "What did they say, Dad?"

My father sits beside me and shows me the neat column of figures.
Travel costs in blue, admission costs in green,
Food and lodging in black, and the grand total in red, underlined twice.
"Wow," I say. "That's a lot of money."

He puts an arm around my shoulder.
"Yes, it is. It would be as much money
As two cars like the one we're driving right now,
Or about two thousand gallons of milk."

He looks down, toward the paper, but stares past it,
As if his careful calculations weren't even there.
"I'm sorry, son. I think it just won't work out this time."
He looks more tired than I can ever remember seeing him.

In that moment, I glimpse the immensity
Of what this man has given me, how deeply he feels
The weight of my wishes and needs.
"It's OK, Dad," I say. "We can have a pretty good time right here."

Photo Credit

A Prayer for Life and Direction

Gentle Spirit, hovering
Just above the surface
Of my soul's dark places,
Breathe new life
Into these dry bones.
Let me feel that life
Fluttering in my chest.
Show me those good works,
Prepared long before
The first sunrise,
The first gentle breeze,
My proper path,
The one I'm equipped to follow.
Enlighten that path for me
That I might walk in Christ's way,
Full of His true being,
Redeemed by His good sacrifice.