A thousand years after the Vikings...

The Havarmal, sometimes called 'The Book of Viking Wisdom' or similar, is part of the Elder or Poetic Edda and is a collection of how-to-live-your-life sayings attributed to Odin. Stanza 75 is one of the most famous sections and translates along the lines of:

"Cattle die and kinsmen die,
all men are mortal.
Words of praise
will never perish,
nor a noble name."

So, Odin tells us we will be remembered by our good deeds, long after we have died. Sounds OK to me...

A Modern Havarmal

Few now own cattle, fewer spears
Or speak of ‘kinsmen’
But still, ‘tis good to live a tale worth telling,
To waken new each day while still unwaked,
Live well
And in doing so
Free the Earth and Man from bonds
Of wanton avarice,
Of small-mindedness
And unenlightened dumb self-interest –
Repay at least a little
Of what we can not help but take,
Oppose by witness borne,
By passive lock and shackle,
Or carefully placed cyber-sabot –
Bring down the bad,
Let them take their shots;
Publish and be culture-jammed –
Fear not
The fear-mongers and the haters,
The sorrow-leeches feeding on
A dead man’s grief –
No words will hail them
In their dishonour,
But rain down hard
The mockery of tear-streaked clowns,
Of drummers, singers,
Lovers, dancers,
Readers, writers, learners,
Players and creators,
Gentle citizens and warriors
Steal the wheels from their bandwagon
By acts of mindful, kind dissent –
That’s time well-spent
When all is said and cited,
There is no life in spite,
And revenge is best kept off the menu
To avoid a world gone blind.

Cheerleaders of the world unite

On day 29 of NaPoWriMo, I posted the first 6 verses of this multilingual piece - here it is in its now-complete entirety - undoubtedly a few slightly skewed pronunciation-rhymes and scans in there, but I prefer to see those as poetic licence, marks of a handmade product if you will...

Cheerleaders of the world unite

Two, four, six eight,
Do our words depreciate?
Three, five, seven, nine,
Not if we perform on time,
Speak the minute, second, hour,
Verses blossom, passion-flowered,
Cold black bile or sticky-sweet,
Angsty trick or tasty treat.

Deux quatre six huit,
Does Baudelaire have Shakespeare beat?
Trois cinq sept neuf,
No chance ami, not on my turf,
The Bard’s just bought his ivory tower,
And skips stiff-ruffed ‘neath rush-lit bowers,
Soliloquys in Stratford’s streets,
Where airs and sonnets maidens meet.

Due quattro sei otto,
Pay the piper, that’s my motto,
Tre cinque sette nove,
Never mess with Kaiser Soze,
The Mafia have nowt on him,
Concrete-booted one-way swim,
Grist for King’s Pet Semetary,
Reanimated zombie - scary.

Zwei vier sechs acht,
Get your busking butt well-parked,
Drei fünf sieben neun,
Into the hat old pfennig coins,
Profits meagre, pickings slim,
Beholden to the punter‘s whim,
Though still enough to get mead-merry,
Ferment the hops, the grain, the berry.

Dau pedwar chwech wyth,
Stuff my face with bara brith,
Tri pump saith naw,
Off to eisteddfod, man of straw,
Poet-battles, kennings slam,
Metheglin drunk by the dram,
Flaunt your metaphor prowess,
Poetry, words‘ party-dress.

Tvö fjögurra sex átta,
Viking skalds and saga-chatter,
þrjú fimm sjö níu,
Sing ho and raise a longship crew,
Strike the oar upon the fjord,
Tie your bride‘s bright hand-fast cord,
Live your life by Havarmal,
Brief pre-Valhalla interval.

Două patru șase opt,
Troubadour starts, the gossip stops,
Trei cinci șapte nouă,
Roma, take pride in who you are,
Dance round the campfire, dance in the streets,
Dance with the next stranger that you meet,
Listen to the fiddle, hear its tune,
Music is a measure of life‘s fortune.

Kettő négy hat nyolc,
Kiss me Beltane, Samhain, Imbolc,
Három öt kilenc hét
Danube-summer’s beach-hot sweat,
See Saint Stephen on his mount,
Steppe-men’s ancient victory-shout,
Stow away your spurs, your bows,
Watch the river as it flows.

Dva chetyre shest' vosem'
Black-earth fertile chernozem,
Tri pyat' sem' devyat',
Abandonment of Pripyat,
Orthodoxy dome-tattooed,
The Great, The Terrible, the shrewd,
From Rurik to the oligarchs,
Red Square, Kremlin, Gorky Park.

Iki dört altı sekiz,
Drowsing ‘neath old olive trees,
Üç beş yedi dokuz,
Gemlik, colour of a bruise,
Çatal Hüyük, ancient town,
Neolithic city found,
Before Stonehenge or Newgrange maze,
Old when the walls of Troy were raised.

Dua empat enam delapan,
Chew on fiery-hot rendang,
Tiga lima tujuh sembilan,
Orang pendek, myst’ry forest man,
Bathe in Kerinci’s sulphured springs,
Yogyakarta’s house of kings,
Komodo dragons fiercely slither,
Rafflesia bloom vast then whither.

Dō cāra chaha āṭha
Off to the east by followed star,
Tīna pān̄ca sāta nau,
Give way unto the Holy Cow,
Tiny shrines, bright pigment-smeared,
Mela-masses feast and cheer,
From mangroved deltas’ humid steam,
To mountain-tops of cloud-decked dreams.

Mbili nne sita nane,
Githeri beans and hot ugali,
Tatu tano saba tisa,
Naivasha lake, an evening breeze,
Hike through dusty-hot Hell’s Gate,
Mara river in full spate,
Maasai-village welcome-feast,
Watched by baboon and hartebeest.

Twee vier zes acht,
Anne Frank House on Prinsengracht,
Drie vijf zeven negen,
Anarcho-syndicalist pagan,
Cycle ‘long the polder-dykes,
Amsterdam a field of bikes,
Sunflower, iris, cypressed land
Witness Vincent’s star-night hand.

[For those who list factual lists (I do), the languages are - English, French, Italian, German, Welsh, Icelandic, Romanian, Hungarian, Russian, Turkish, Indonesian, Hindi, Swahili, Dutch]

NaPoWriMo day 29

Oooo, it's NaPoWriMo day 29 - just one more to go - and the penultimate prompt is to write a poem including at least five words from other languages. I’ve gone for numbers as I’ve learned these and various other fragments of a fair few languages over the years. Here are the first six verses of what will be expanded into a rather longer piece…

Cheerleaders of the world unite

Two, four, six eight,
Do our words depreciate?
Three, five, seven, nine,
Not if we perform on time,
Speak the minute, second, hour,
Verses blossom, passion-flowered,
Cold black bile or sticky-sweet,
Angsty trick or tasty treat.

Deux quatre six huit
Does Baudelaire have Shakespeare beat ?
Trois cinq sept neuf
No chance ami, not on my turf,
The Bard’s just bought his ivory tower,
And skips stiff-ruffed ‘neath rush-lit bowers,
Soliloquys in Stratford’s streets,
Where airs and sonnets maidens meet.

Due quattro sei e otto,
Pay the piper, that’s my motto,
Tre e cinque sette nove,
Never mess with Kaiser Soze,
The Mafia have nowt on him,
Concrete-booted one-way swim,
Grist for King’s Pet Semetary,
Reanimated zombie - scary.

Zwei vier sechs acht,
Get your busking butt well-parked,
Drei fünf sieben neun,
Into the hat old pfennig coins,
Profits meagre, pickings slim,
Beholden to the punter‘s whim,
Though still enough to get mead-merry,
Ferment the hops, the grain, the berry.

Dau pedwar chwech wyth,
Stuff my face with bara brith,
Tri pump saith naw,
Off to eisteddfod, man of straw,
Poet-battles, kennings slam,
Metheglin drunk by the dram,
Flaunt your metaphor prowess,
Poetry, words‘ party-dress.

Tvö fjögurra sex átta,
Viking skalds and saga-chatter,
þrjú fimm sjö níu,
Sing ho and raise a longship crew,
Strike the oar upon the fjord,
Tie your bride‘s bright hand-fast cord,
Live your life by Havarmal,
Brief pre-Valhalla interval.

[to be continued...]

NaPoWriMo day 16

NaPoWriMo day 16 and time for some silliness - a fake ‘translation’ of a poem written in an unfamiliar language… given my Viking tendencies, I’ve gone for the Icelandic-language Skagafjörður by Gerður Kristný. Here's the original (published in 2007 by Mál og menning, Reykjavik and found in the collection Höggstaður):

Ég reyni að vera
alúðleg við börnin
svo þau hirði um leiðið mitt
þegar þar að kemur
mylji köku ofan í grasið
á afmælinu mínu
og fari með ljóðið um
fingruðu kýrnar
þá sjálf orðin gömul og grá

Samt á ég eftir að
þekkja þau aftur
á himneskri húsalyktinni

alltaf skulu þau ilma eins og Jesúbarnið

Now for my faux-translated version, with all due apologies to the original author…

Eggs rain down on Vera,
All addled with burning,
So they hurt without a leather mitt,
They go over there in the corner,
Thousands cooked in the oven, it’s greasy,
An unappealing menu,
This fare I’m loathing, I am,
Fingering the corner,
That shall forthwith go mouldy and grey.

Something with egg after all,
Thicker though after
A heinous creep has licked the tin.

All tough-skulled, though ill from one egg, yes you’re barmy.