A. Z. FOREMAN is a poet and translator pursuing a doctorate in Near Eastern Languages at the Ohio State University. His work (both original compositions as well as translations from Arabic, French, Persian, Chinese, Latin, Occitan, Ukrainian, Russian, Hebrew, Welsh, Irish and Yiddish) has been featured in the Los Angeles Review, ANMLY, Asymptote, La Piccioletta Barca, Ilanot Review, Lunch Ticket, Metamorphoses, the Penguin Book of Russian Poetry and elsewhere. But really he’s most proud of having had his work featured in two people’s tattoos, and if you have a dog he’d love to pet it
For Two Old English Poets
Beowulf Poet
Oh have I heard of You before and yet
little about You other than Your tongue
of Marchen steel and a monk’s two-edged song
for God the Weird. Your heart let heathens fret
limbs off Cain’s kin. Your blood is red sunset
on Woden hanging Christlike. Tell again
of Yeatland’s thane and freaks who prowled the fen.
Let Beowulf burn and burn till I forget
to ponder You, drop from dried floods of lore
rephrased molecularly into fame
who knew why Heorot fell to barbarous flame,
and what the Wolving chief was murdered for.
Dear last survivor of Deor’s shattered scene,
what would You have these monstrous treasures mean?
Deor
All of it passed. Your Wayland in the snows
eaten with frost and anger, your love-quick
Mathild, mad Thedrick, wolf-mad Armenrick…
Their English stories were a spring-starved rose,
which leaves us here to thresh their cameos
in you like lighting candles with no wick
or parsing ravings of a lunatic
in a half-cognate language no one knows.
You are a name now and refrain, a true
bard in eternal exile, wandering
papers of scholars as they scratch for rue
to bleed beneath the wistful scab you sing.
Your hurt song may have made whole legends ring
but they have passed. So too has most of you.
Deor
Translated from Old English
a translation for Christina von Nolcken
Wayland in Wormland went through harrows,
The strongminded smith suffered in exile.
Worry and longing walked beside him,
winter-raw anguish. He ached for escape
after King Nithad cramped his sinews
and bound a slave of the better man.
That passed in time. So too can this.
To Beadild’s mind her brothers’ deaths
weren’t as wounding as what she faced
herself when she came to clearly see
that she was pregnant. That princess unwed
could not handle what would become of her.
That passed in time. So too can this.
We know the tale of tragic Mathild.
the Geat bore her a bottomless passion,
all sleep banished by a baneful love
That passed in time. So too can this.
Tyrant Thedrick for thirty winters
ruled the Mearings, as many know.
That passed in time. So too can this.
We have all heard tell of Armenrick
and his wolfsick mind. He was one cruel king,
That overlord of the outland Goths
whose state was set in strung-up hearts
as strong men sat in sorrow-chains
awaiting the worst, and wishing so much
for a foe to liberate the land of their king.
That passed in time. So too can this.
A man sits mournful, mind ripped from joy.
His spirit in dark, he deems himself
foredoomed to endure ordeals forever.
Then he may think how throughout the world
the Wise God goes and works around:
meting out grace, mercy and certain
success to some, suffering to many.
Of myself I want to say just this:
I was high poet to the Hedenings once,
Dear to my master. ”Deer” was my name.
For many winters I was a man in that hall
And the heart of my lord. But Herrend came
And reaped the riches and rights of land
That guardian of men once granted me,
And stole my place with a poet’s skill.
That passed in time. So too can this.
This poem refers to stock characters — real and fictional — from Germanic lore. Some of the figures are now obscure, and those that aren’t are not known directly from Old English versions of the story. I have modernized many of the names in my translation, giving them forms that would be plausible as Modern English versions of the name. The biggest exception is Wayland, whose Old English name would actually have been Weeland or more likely Weland had it survived into the modern period. Wayland (Old English Wéland, Old Norse Vǫlundr, Old High German Wiolant) is barely attested in English written sources, though there are visual representations of him. He was a legendary smith renowned for his metal working ability. From Norse sources it emerges that he was forced to work for Nithad (OE Niþhad, ON Níðuðr) who hamstrung him to stop his escape, and that he avenged himself by killing the king’s sons and impregnating his daughter Beadild (OE Beadohilde, ON Bǫðvildr). Mathild and Geat are totally opaque. They appear to be famous lovers that met a tragic end, like Romeo and Juliet, or Layla and Majnun. The ablest guess is that they correspond to Magnhild and Gaute of a Scandinavian ballad tale recorded in the 19th century, but even if so the story as it was known to the poet’s English audience may well have differed greatly from the version known from Scandinavia a thousand years later. Thedric is Theodoric, the Ostrogothic emperor who ruled in Italy from 493 to 526. Armenric is Ermanaric the Goth, another famous tyrant.
Lament of the Last Survivor (Beowulf 2231-2270)
Translated from Old English
a translation for Nelson Goering
There was such ancient wealth in that earthen vault.
In an age long past, with an end in his mind,
someone now nameless had known to hide
his dear treasure in the darkness here,
the heaped legacy of a highborn race
at dynasty’s end. Death already
had taken them all in times gone by,
and left just this one: the last warrior
of a fallen line whose fate he mourned,
expecting the same. This sad watchman
knew that ageless hoard would be only his
to enjoy briefly. The barrow stood
built and waiting by the breaking waves
crafted for safety, set on the headland.
That keeper of rings then carried in
all the gold-plated goods he had there
worth protecting. His words were these few:
“Hold now, O earth, what heroes cannot:
Wealth of warriors. It was worthy men
who delved it from you. Death in battle
has mowed them down. Mortal horror
has made away with the mortal souls
of each of my clan who have quit this life,
the hall-mirth of knights. Nobody’s here
to bear me a blade or bring my cup’s
burnished meadgold. My band moved on.
The hard helmet hasped in goldwork
must lose its hoop. Helm-shiners sleep
that once burnished my battle-mask.
War-coats that braved the biting steel
when shields burst wide will be worn to bits
with their brave wearers. The whorled hauberk
will wander no more on the warchief’s back
in a battle band. No more brilliant harp
with timbered tune, no trained falcon
swooping the songhall, no swift-hoof horse
prancing the courtgrounds. Plundering carnage
ousts whole peoples out of existence.”
So he mourned who survived, remembering hurts,
alone after them all, aching and maundering
for days and nights till death’s tide reached
his beaten heart.
This passage is traditionally known as the Lament of the Last Survivor, and it is one of my favourites from the poem. The hero finds treasure in the hoard left by a man of a vanished nation, the last of a people who lived even before the Migration Era in which the poem is set. The Beowulf poet elsewhere alludes to a number of legendary episodes (often from stories that are now unknown apart from their oblique mention in this poem), and normally names the participants. Sometimes that’s all he does. The audience would be expected to know, for example, who Hrothmund, Heorogar and Heoroweard were (the former two names are completely unknown outside of Beowulf, and the latter only from Scandinavian material). This larger narrative context gives point to the fact that the man here is completely anonymized. With no one left to carry on the tribe’s history, the whole heroic ideal of immortality through imperishable fame (or, if you like *ḱléwos *ń̥dʰgʷʰitom) is meaningless. His name is dead, and so too should his story be. And yet, the story lives in this poem. We are hearing a story we ought not to be able to hear. Invited to consider how many tribes and nations have simply disappeared and left not so much as a name, we imagine a memory we cannot really have. The man himself has no use for the treasures of his nation now, and so decides to bury in a hoard. With no one left to talk to, he addresses himself to the earth as it receives his tribe’s now-meaningless treasure.
A. Z. FOREMAN is a literary translator, poet and language teacher currently working on a doctorate in Near Eastern Languages at the Ohio State University. He received his B.A. in Linguistics from the University of Chicago, and his M.A. in Arabic Language from the University of Maryland. His translations from Arabic, Chinese, Old Irish, Italian, Russian, Old English, Ukrainian, Yiddish and Welsh have appeared in sundry anthologies, journals and a BBC radio broadcast. He divides his time between the bedroom, the bathroom and the kitchen. If you have a dog, he would very much like to pet it.