The Lament of the Woman

 

I wreak this wording, woeful, about myself,
my sole travel.

                                  I can say this:
What agony I have endured (always aging),
new or old, nothing has been so great as this.
Worsted always by my wreckpaths, I wail.
First my lord left here, his land.
He, over the woven waves. I worried by dawns:
Where was the liege-lord of my land?

Then I ferried forth, to seek my own following,
a wanderer, ally-less, in my woe-suffering.

Then his kinsmen began to scheme,
through secret thought, that they would part us,
that we two would be twinned in the world,
would live most loathfully, I longing for him…

My bread-breaker begged me to take this place as home,
I owned few allies in this area,
few dear ones. So doles my mind.

The most me-matched man I found,
hard-chanced, and heavy of head,
Was murky-minded, scheming murder.
Blithely of bearing we two bid vows:
We would not be parted but by death.

Above all else, now that is turned on its head again.
It is now as it had never been,
our friendship. Far and near I must
fear and feel the feuding of my dearly-loved.

He commanded me to dwell in the bosom of the wood,
under the oak tree, in this earth-scruff.
This earth-salon is ancient, and I am all of longing,
There are dim valleys, dunes upheaving,
bitter burgs, briar-browed,
an unwinsome home.
                                    Here, often
bitterly beset, abandoned by my dearest friend,
departed from here. Is my lover on earth
leaving life, living in his deathbed?

I go alone, in the dawn,
under the oak tree, through this earth-scrapping.
There I must sit the summer day through,
where I can weep my wretched seething,
full of need. Never may I,
from this mind-misery, rest myself;
not at all from this.

           Not since life begot itself on me.

So must a young man be sober-souled,
Thought hard-hearted. And he must hold
a blissful bearing, even while that breastbale
drags him in deep-sorrow. He must depend on himself.
All his joy of the world may be jerked away.

Far from folkland, there my friend sits:
under a flint-cliff, frisked with frost,
my weary-minded warrior. Water flows
on the dreary floor. Drawn
with great mood-mire; he remembers too much
those more wonderful hours.

                                Woe be to him who must
await a lover with longing.

 

 

n e x t

 

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