More dire than any devil scowls the sun.

Like corpses’ hair, the grass-tufts in the breeze

Rustle without noise; a world-wind runs

Throughout this ash tree’s drooping, withered leaves;

 

And blows and blurs the surface of a well

Among dark roots, those ripples that run silent,

Obscuring secrets ’neath their subtle swell,

That depth of fate, its mysteries low and quiet;

 

And swings this poor flesh dangling from a cord:

Myself in agony, half-dead, and pierced

Through flank, whence drips to pool the gradual gore:

A giving wound, a spring was oped by spear,

 

While o’er yon blasted heath doth breathe some voice

Of things disturbing, vap’rous entities,

The thoughts of ravens brooding on the moors,

Those clouds that wash upon the airy seas,

 

And minds and visions, soaked in stormy bath.

Still dissipates my red life in the pond,

As angels wail upon wide-wand’ring drafts,

As Nott takes reins just as the sun hath gone.

 

Nine nights my pain’s prolonged, nine days I die;

And none doth come to offer wine or meat

Upon this lonely rock where heavens sigh,

The stone that gushes torrents at my feet;

 

But without movement, something in its womb

Of glimm’ring water stirs when I look down:

Some pregnancy in nature’s hidden rooms,

A fateful birth where suffering doth drown;

 

And now the branch above me cracks and creaks,

Straining with weight, while from the well arise

The universe’s symbols, like those dreams

Encountered at the very depth of night

 

When soul forgets itself. Cracks more and more

Weak limb – which snaps! I drop through empty space,

Strange written magic swirling on that floor

Of ripples – now the water do I break,

 

To live again, and breathe upon this earth,

Myself now sacrificed unto myself,

Knowing those charms that in the water whirled,

Grasping the runes that sorceries might spell;

 

And wise and somber, o’er the shriveled land

I stride again unto Valhalla-home,

Crossing gray meads, by eerie currents fanned,

To sit again on dread, far-seeing throne.

*

*

(illustration by Lorenz Frølich)