Anglo-Saxon Riddle

April 29, 2010 Leave a comment

Here’s A translation for my novel (BLANK JACK):

Moths devour words.

To me, it seems a wondrous wyrd,

Then I learnt the miracle,

That the wyrm consumes some men’s riddles,

That shadowed thief,

To the very vellum the morsel’s written on.

The thief is not a whit the wiser

From the words he swallowed.

Here’s the original Anglo-Saxon. What do you think?

 

“Moththe word fraet.      Me thaet thuhte.

wraetlicu wyrd,     tha ic thaet wundor gefraegn

thaet se wyrm forswealg     wera gied sumes,

theof in thystro,     thrymfastne cwide

ond thaes strangan stathol.     Staelgiest ne waes

wihte thy gleawra,     the he tham wordun swealg.

 

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Story Extract – 1.1A

February 3, 2010 1 Comment

The girl arrived at the beginning of August. A rucksack slung over one shoulder and pulling a suitcase behind her. She came by taxi. Mila Wieczna, the housekeeper, believed the girl had brought all she owned. The girl stood about six foot tall with long black hair, olive skin and wide almond shaped eyes, ringed red. She wore tight blue jeans, a shirt and cream sweater over the top with a black jacket and a copy of More tucked under one arm. Mila pretended to dust the second-floor windowsill as the girl walked down the path and into the house next door. The girl did not lift her gaze from the garden path once as she walked.

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So I Thought The Universe

January 25, 2010 1 Comment

So i thought the world
Felt love destroying our
hard won harmony,
creating where chaos left
the world bereft
Of a soul to call our own,
Or is it love’s grand failure?

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Novel 1.1. Extract

January 24, 2010 1 Comment

Jack Whitehorse’s face dissolved into the woods. His hands feeling along a drystone wall. Fate shattered wonders of this stonecraft. He limped forward, pressing on his more worldly foot. An ankle twisted by earlier pursuit. Within the boundary, paving stones lay burst, a giant’s labour in decay. Roofs fallen in. Towers ruinous. Frosted cement melted underfoot as he trod the path. He groped his way through the ravaged frost-gate and past chipped storm-shelters now rendered useless. A spotted cat amongst them sat holding a mouse in its maw. Decline all around. Ruins abound. Autumnal leaves cracked under distant footsteps.

       This was a bitter place. Bitterer than death. He did not know how he came to the ruin. He had become so sleepy. The present blurred into the past and another place. A ruffled mog seemed to mew and lick its paw atop sodden timbers. The old places losing their grip on Earth. The master builders having long since perished or departed. Around the wall a lone she-hound stood as if awaiting their return. The wall, grey with lichen and bleeding red rust, its stones lying in heaps and piles where moss still clung to life beneath the noose, fell away.

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