Bertha Rogers
(USA)
RIDDLE 65 – ONION
I am tall, reed-like. I live, but I say nothing. I am dumb,
and I will soon join the dead. Before I rose;
I will live again though robber’s knife carve my skin,
bite right through my body, cut off my head, then hold me,
hard, in a gashing bed. I will not bite a man without
he bites me first, but many a man can’t resist the urge.
RIDDLE 67 – BIBLE, BOOK
There was greatness in the hall
of the high king— a strange thing
without words spoke wisdom,
sang tribute. It was a wonder
to me that no mouth had it,
nor feet, yet it avouched
that it was a teacher of people;
it proclaimed, “Truly I will walk
Middle-Earth forever!” I have seen
this creature in the company
of earls and kings. It is wound
all about with gold and silver,
and with hallowed jewels. It lives on,
in any place men eat and drink.
A wise and constant man
will easily say what this entity is.
RIDDLE 77 – OYSTER
The sea fed me, sheltered me
near the shore. I was covered
by curling combers. I walked without feet,
often backwards, my mouth an in-road
for the flood-guest. Now my flesh
will be devoured by a man. He will slit
the sides of my bone-skin with a sharp spear,
then—yes!— bolt me quickly, uncooked.
Translated by Bertha Rogers
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BIO
BERTHA ROGERS
There are 95 riddle-poems in the Exeter Book, a tome of Anglo-Saxon writings from before 1000 A.D.; they are rich in metaphor, alliteration, and rhythm. Bertha Rogers’s translation of the riddle-poems, Uncommon Creatures, Singing Things: The Anglo-Saxon Riddle-Poems Translated and Illuminated, will be published in 2018. In 2000, Rogers’s translation of Beowulf was published (Birch Brook Press, NY). More than 400 of her original poems and translations have been published in literary magazines and journals and in chapbooks and full-length collections, including Sleeper, You Wake (Mellen Press) and Heart Turned Back (Salmon Poetry Publishing, Ireland).