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 

• Even if I don’t hear your voice, I know by Vinko Kalinic by Poetry In English
• Don’t know the answer by Vinko Kalinic by Poetry In English
• Dog’s love by Vinko Kalinić by Poetry In English
• Dear Traffic Signal by Vinaya Kumar Hanumanthappa by Poetry In English
• Confessions of a Software Engineer by Vinaya Kumar Hanumanthappa by Poetry In English
• Black song about a black woman and red wine by Vinko Kalinić by Poetry In English
• Birthday party blunder by Vinaya Kumar Hanumanthappa by Poetry In English
• Beautiful Stranger by Vinaya Kumar Hanumanthappa by Poetry In English
• Ballad about a stinking flower by Vinko Kalinic by Poetry In English
• Altar amid the sea by Vinko Kalinic by Poetry In English
• Aeneid by Virgil by Poetae Romani
• Eclogue VIII by Virgil by Poetae Romani
• Eclogue VI by Virgil by Poetae Romani
• Eclogue IV by Virgil by Poetae Romani
• Eclogue III by Virgil by Poetae Romani
• Eclogue V by Virgil by Poetae Romani
• Ecologue IX by Virgil by Poetae Romani
• Ecologue I by Virgil by Poetae Romani
• Eclogue X by Virgil by Poetae Romani
• You by Vladimir Mayakovsky by Владимир Маяковский

More external links (open in a new tab):

Russian Commerce Agency

Dealing Monster

Doska or the Board – write anything

Search engines:

Yandex – the best search engine for searches in Russian (and the best overall image search engine, in any language, anywhere)

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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