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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External links

Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus

Talking Writing Monster’s Page –

Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh

Poems in English 

• love.html by Poetry In English
• lord_god_have_mercy_on_me.html by Poetry In English
• libation.html by Poetry In English
• least_in_a_list.html by Poetry In English
• interpret_the_light.html by Poetry In English
• innocence.html by Poetry In English
• in_the_stone_i_rooted.html by Poetry In English
• in_between_the_strophes.html by Poetry In English
• human_joys.html by Poetry In English
• human_charms.html by Poetry In English
• he_who_creates_re_creates_himself.html by Poetry In English
• hai_kou_unpublished.html by Poetry In English
• hai_kou.html by Poetry In English
• greek_light.html by Poetry In English
• greece.html by Poetry In English
• golden_eangle.html by Poetry In English
• gesture_theory_a_villanelle.html by Poetry In English
• gem_immortality.html by Poetry In English
• fruit_leaf_roots_flowers.html by Poetry In English
• first_verse.html by Poetry In English

More external links (open in a new tab):

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Doska or the Board – write anything

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Qwant – the best search engine for searches in French, German as well as Romance and Germanic languages.

Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees

Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.

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

 

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