Meditation on a Bone

A piece of bone, found at Trondhjem in 1901, with the following runic inscription (about A.D. 1050) cut on it: I loved her as a maiden; I will not trouble Erlend’s detestable wife; better she should be a widow.

Words scored upon a bone,

Scratched in despair or rage —

Nine hundred years have gone;

Now, in another age,

They burn with passion on

A scholar’s tranquil page.

The scholar takes his pen

And turns the bone about,

And writes those words again.

Once more they seethe and shout

And through a human brain

Undying hate rings out.

“I loved her when a maid;

I loathe and love the wife

That warms another’s bed:

Let him beware his life!”

The scholar’s hand is stayed;

His pen becomes a knife

To grave in living bone

The fierce archaic cry.

He sits and reads his own

Dull sum of misery.

A thousand years have flown

Before that ink is dry.

And, in a foreign tongue,

A man, who is not he,

Reads and his heart is wrung

This ancient grief to see,

And thinks: When I am dung,

What bone shall speak for me?

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Poems in English 

• houses.html by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
• flight_of_stairs.html by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
• epitaph_on_a_disturber_of_his_times.html by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
• epitaph_for_our_children.html by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
• cats.html by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
• Attack On The Ad-Man by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
• When I Was Young the Silk poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster by Archie Randolph Ammons
• Weathering poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster by Archie Randolph Ammons
• Their Sex Life poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster by Archie Randolph Ammons
• The City Limits poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster by Archie Randolph Ammons
• Still poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster by Archie Randolph Ammons
• So I Said I Am Ezra poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster by Archie Randolph Ammons
• Small Song poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster by Archie Randolph Ammons
• Shit List; Or, Omnium-gatherum Of Diversity Into Unity poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster by Archie Randolph Ammons
• Rogue Elephant poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster by Archie Randolph Ammons
• Rivulose poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster by Archie Randolph Ammons
• Release poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster by Archie Randolph Ammons
• Recovery poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster by Archie Randolph Ammons
• Rapids poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster by Archie Randolph Ammons
• Poetics poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster by Archie Randolph Ammons

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Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.

 

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