Weland the Smith
This short selection is from the Old English Boethius, a translation and reënvisioning of Boethius’s celebrated De consolatione philosophiae. The Old English Boethius was made probably around the turn of the tenth century by an anonymous early medieval English author. The translator took liberties with many places in the work, restructuring and rethinking where he thought necessary. In this short excerpt, the translator meditates on mortality and length of life’s intrinsic value not, as Boethius does in the Latin original, by raising the example of the Roman hero Fabricius, but by raising the example of the Germanic hero Weland, the legendary smith who appears in poems like Beowulf and in visual art like the Franks Casket. There is at least one ancient barrow named “Weland’s Smithy” in England, which may have prompted the reference to burial mounds.
Where now the bones of wise Weland,
the great goldsmith whose renown stretched wide?
I say "the bones of wise Weland"
for no earth-dweller can deny another
whatever skill Christ secured for him.
As difficult as it is to dislodge the sun
and the swift heavens from their proper circuit:
that's how hard it is for anyone to deny
another man his native skill.
Who can make out in what earth-mound
lay the bones of wise Weland,
strewn and stretched over the barrow's floor?
. . .
Though I know you ween and desire as well
that you'll press on living for a prolonged period,
why is that better, why "longer" best?
For death skips over not a single person
(though one's day-count seems to dally),
once it's been given the Lord's own leave.
What will anyone enjoy on that day,
a mortal from that fame, if immutable death
must seize his life after all his delights?
Baxter's Hollow
-Sauk County, Wisconsin
Down your asphalt gullet we go.
Miles of one-and-a-half lane road,
no shoulder, few turnoffs. Into Baxter’s Hollow,
birds luxuriating in your unbroken treeblanket
remnant of le Grand Bois, the Big Woods
of hickory and oaks red and white,
basswood. White pines crouch
on the stream banks, waiting. We march single file
where a path used to lie, tussocky and ticklined,
savage anthills a horror to look upon!
Your outwash, your pressed grasses and brush
under canopy a bear to walk thru, lighting out
down nontrail after nontrail and this Wisconsin wilderness
halts us reluctant after ten yards—
the most pathetic naturalists to visit
in years. Jack-in-the-pulpit, squawroot,
large-leaved asther, witch hazel
shape your understory with leathertough wood fern,
partridgeberry.
We happen on an old
foundation with its steps—what did they say
to each other closed in by all this
vegetation? We dream deciduous
dreams, Otter Creek—you benevolent overlord,
seeing all, watching over this
from your boulders as we turn our steps from sprawling
lily-of-the-valley on the loose for a century.
And you keep us out of your hollow, you resist us
in our lack of necessity. And you chuckle goodnaturedly,
for your flowers and glories, your spring-beauty trillium,
your marsh marigold and shooting-star are safe.
Sacred Heart Shrine
The Mazatec curandera Maria Sabina (c.1894-1985), who lived in the Sierra Mazateca of Mexico, became an icon and inspiration for the western psychedelic movement after the banker and ethnomycologist R. Gordon Wasson attended one of her all-night healing ceremonies (veladas) that employed psilocybin-containing mushrooms in the 1950s. Her chants, some of which Wasson published with translations, inspired poetic imitations, the most famous of which is Anne Waldman’s fantastic “Fast Speaking Woman.” The western counter-culture’s appreciation of Sabina has always tended to neglect that she was a devoted Catholic, which I’ve always found odd but not terribly surprising. In order to rectify the imitative record somewhat, here’s a poem about a visit to a wayside shrine of the Sacred Heart in Door County that echoes the structure and syntax of her chants. Maria Sabina was a member of the Sisterhood of the Sacred Heart of Jesus for decades.
Heart of the ditch way,
Heart of New Belgium,
Brown House here,
we standing here,
you Sacred Heart house,
Precious Blood house,
Ocean of Mercy house,
Ocean of Compassion,
Heart Ocean here,
Children Heart here,
Sick Friends here,
Stars Invisible House,
Reams of Paper House,
Rain Ocean House,
Rain Spring House.
We kneel, we burn
in your House.
Sacred Blood House,
Ocean Blood,
Staining Blood,
Dying Blood,
Glistening Stone Blood,
Shore Blood here,
Shore Ridge here,
Peninsula Blood
from the Heart
of the Son.
Blood in the Bosom
of the Father,
Blood in the beak
of the Paraclete.
At the Heart of the Trinity here,
at the Heart of insult here,
at the Heart of no-where here,
at the Heart of the non-aliud hic,
at the Heart of Roads here,
of grass fields here,
at the Heart of silentio here,
of stilnes her,
at the Heart of knowledge and wisdom here,
the Everlasting Hills here,
at the Heart of infamy here,
at the Heart of Blood and Water
pouring from the Wounded Side here.
Sacred Heart here,
Thorn Slash here,
we follow your palms,
we follow your path,
Bleeding Flowers,
Bleeding Roadways,
Bleeding Ditches.
Cor Iesu Sacratissimum,
Cor Iesu de la madrugada
Aamunkoitto
Fan e’ dage
af döguninni
Cor Iesu aurorae,
der Morgendämmerung
prabhātattinṟe pratāpavuṁ
av gryningen
svitan’ku
fun di fartog
Świtu:
miserere nobis
O Sacred Heart,
our knees here,
our eyes here,
our tremors here,
our hands here,
Sacred Heart
on the faux wood paneling,
Sacred Heart of Door County,
Sacred Heart of all our failures,
Sacred Heart of my children,
Sacred Heart of my wife’s hurts
my wife’s legs and knees
Sacred Heart of my wife’s fears
and embrace of suffering,
Sacred Heart of my wife’s smiling face,
Sacred Heart incense,
Sacred Heart book
and pages everywhere,
Sacred Heart trembling
to enshroud us
thrilling to see us
to take us
and save us from ourselves.
Sacred Heart
knowing every pain,
every slight,
every coldness,
every honor.
Sacred Heart of
County C,
Brown House,
Grass-tall Ditch
of cramped shrine-rooms,
Ocean Hall of Brussels,
Sacred Heart of Mercy’s Ocean,
we follow your Palms.
Your Side.
