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Urban Warfare
Urban Warfare
A soldier from a foot patrol hunkers in a doorway gun scanning the length of the street whatever might happen next unblinkingly a woman passes wheeling a pram, the soldier remembers a child opening his eyes to a blue sky a white cloud the sound of a bird singing from a rooftop.
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10 | Old English
Deor
Welund him be wurman wræces cunnade, anhydig eorl earfoþa dreag, hæfde him to gesiþþe sorge ond longaþ, wintercealde wræce; wean oft onfond, 5 siþþan hine Niðhad on nede legde, swoncre seonobende on syllan monn. Þæs ofereode, þisses swa mæg!
Beadohilde ne wæs hyre broþra deaþ on sefan swa sar swa hyre sylfre þing, 10 þæt heo gearolice ongieten hæfde þæt heo eacen wæs; æfre ne meahte þriste geþencan, hu ymb þæt sceolde. Þæs ofereode, þisses swa mæg!
We þæt Mæðhilde monge gefrugnon 15 wurdon grundlease Geates frige, þæt hi seo sorglufu slæp ealle binom. Þæs ofereode, þisses swa mæg!
Đeodric ahte þritig wintra Mæringa burg; þæt wæs monegum cuþ. 20 Þæs ofereode, þisses swa mæg!
George Philip Krapp and Eliot Van Kirk Dobbie (eds). The Exeter Book, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records Vol. 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), pp 178–79. Deor is both allusive and elusive. Its subject matter presupposes knowledge of Germanic legend and its grammar is in places decidedly ambiguous. Elements of it, from the first line to the final ‘refrain’ have been argued over at length. See Anne L. Kinck, The Old English Elegies: A Critical Edition and Genre Study (Montreal and Quebec: McGill-Queen’s University Press, pp 158–68.
