The Wanderer
Translated out of the Old English, The Exeter Book, 10th c.
Often for this one,
alone, lost,
suffering lasts
god help me
—yet my mind,
harried, heavy,
finds its scared way
across seawater,
icy—exiled,
no one else here.
So spoke the wanderer,
land-stomper,
dragged down
by calamity,
bitter slaughter,
kinsmen’s ruin.
I say my sadness
always before dawn,
solitary, miserable
right-to-the-quick,
living with none,
with no one to whom
to tell my inner
thoughts.
I know the rule is
that all great men
hold back their mind-hoard,
bind fast their thinking,
for the tired mind
is fragile, fate-felled.
Thus, the just ones
fall often,
their mind’s dark thoughts
dammed up.
So I, my innermost self,
frightened, fate-fettered,
screams for friends
far from me.
All the years since
I buried my lord,
loaf-keeper,
hid him in dim earth,
I go mad,
weary of winter,
traveling over
the wavy sea’s skin,
looking for my hall,
everybody dead,
bloodied in the room
where treasure was given,
multiple gifts,
where I, far or near,
might find a clansman,
someone to help,
me friendless,
to feel the arms
of his presence
—or actual arms!—
around me,
me opening
to that, someone arriving
when I’m troubled
—friends with whom
to feel feelings fully,
with whom to
feel without fear.
He knows who lives it
how cruel care is
for him who has lost
his friends.
Exile’s path
grips him,
feelings freeze,
nowhere is gold given
anymore,
earth’s fruit.
But he can’t stop
remembering full halls,
a gift-giving lord,
feasts with young fighters.
Long lack of loved ones
kills. To grieve
mire-ward, sleep
sorrow-filled,
no togetherness
binding the pitiable
solitary one.
He dreams he hugs
his lord, kisses him,
kneels, lays his head
lovingly on him
as in the long ago,
headwaters of a
swelling, pouring
river of gifts.
Then he wakes,
friendless wanderer
again, ocean waves
for his road
only,
where seabirds sunbathe,
but their wing-bones spread wide
to hoar-frost, heavy snow
not sun,
hail hitting
mixed with cold flakes,
heart hurtling lord-ward,
hurting.
Sorrow’s stake stabs
the live mind
dreaming of being
with kinsmen
and one’s lord.
He greets them happily,
they swim away instantly,
slip through the dreamscape
—what buoys the soul
brings nothing much
to a person,
nothing like singing.
Care made new,
boat slammed
into a sandbar
flood-sunk.
Indeed I think
no one who passes
through this world
will not—
the inner mind
darkening, thinking
over how all brave,
reckless thanes who,
rushing through
their numbered days,
having left the hall floor,
left this middle earth
where we all dwell
lost
—fall.
Therefore you don’t fling
wisdom down
before you’re old enough,
entering winter’s dale
of the world’s kingdom.
One who knows,
patient, long suffering,
calm, won’t get mad
or be too quick
to speak. Better to wait
before speaking
until, proud, he knows
where his thinking tends,
wandering, welling up.
Then the wise one
sees how
ghostly, ghastly
everything is,
the world’s wealth
a waste
as now throughout
this diverse middle-earth
where we live,
thin walls wind-blown,
frost-filmed, not holding,
houses wrecked
by the wailing wind’s wrath,
ruined wine-hall
—wanderer
dream-deprived
born right then,
in that instant,
as the wanderer, lost,
the very moment
his friends fell
splendidly clothed
by the hall’s wall.
Some who fought
were consumed,
carried onward.
Some were borne off
like birds ocean-ward.
Some like the gray wolf
died apart, grieving.
Some, sad noblemen,
were buried in dim dirt.
So all, in the wave-house,
this vessel wavering
through the world
whelmed by wyrd,
what happens—
the town torn down,
void of town noise,
emptied, over,
ancient friendship
gone, his place there,
where buildings stood,
wise thinking, live minds
brooding over dark life,
thinking deeply
on that, on history
as from a distance.
A wise mind pondering
the swarm of the slain
spoke these words:
Where is the horse?
Where its rider?
Where is the lord,
giver of treasure?
Where is the feasting-house?
Where the hall’s
loveliest life?
Alas the bright cup!
Alas the time gone,
slipped under
night’s curtain
—as if it had never been!
Our loved last warriors
stand on the wall,
wondrous-high,
tangled with serpents.
Fighters’ lives forced out
by ash-spears, weapons
greedy for glorious
fate-forced wounds while
storms trouble the rock-slope,
earth gone to ruin
—winter’s wind-roar
all that’s left—then want
comes with the hail
maddening man,
malice-driven.
All is obliterated,
every earthly empire.
What happens—fate—
turns always
this world under heaven.
Here frail coinage,
here frail friends
—nothing lasting!
Here frail family,
no one to lean on.
All this earth’s frame,
this whipped wobbling
worrying world-scape,
no more than vain
idleness amidst wastes.
