The Seafarer II (Out of Key River to The Bustard Islands)

The original poem, The Seafarer, is an Anglo-Saxon poem composed 
by an anonymous poet of the period 950 to 1100 A.D. 
These earliest English poems are robust, highly alliterative, 
and were most likely sung or chanted to the acccompaniment of a harp. 
They have a lilting, hypnotic rhythm, rather like modern rap music.
They also make use of an intriguing device called a kenning, which is 
a type of complex metaphorical doublet-phrase.
A “world-candle”, for example, is a kenning reference to the sun. 
Two other Anglo-Saxon terms are used in this poem: “Weird” means fate,
or unknowable destiny; and “mere” refers to an ocean,
or large body of boundless water.

                ~

Wind rises, so restless, as wide river wanders,  
as friendless Weird watches this soul-seeker wend,  
to great water, gathering.

As slick-shadowed gull-gliders, scatter to hear me,
frost-feathered visitors, veering in wind-scoops,

secret they skim; lonely they screech,   
to pester my boat-slap. 

So fierce-cold my fingers; no mother to warn me;
waiting for world-candle, wide mere to warm,

I run the rock-gauntlet, glacier-cuts winding    
past grey-granite rock-ribbons, wrestling in time,  

where moss-weeping, wet-seeping, rain drips to river,
no father to mourn me, beard covered in rime,

as day-moon sinks sallow, spray soon spreads my hair;  
sweet weed-musk my wind-wine. 

Now merciless whale-rocks, gaunt grim-ghosted perils,
make memory my mentor, make hope my best course,

rise up on each foam-furl, fall deep-panic down
as bustard-birds call me, fear-freighted, I tire,

though misty my buoys, though false-friend this water,
Man drives to his life-end, consumed by his fire.