Going back to the roots of our own language with this imitation of Anglo-Saxon verse, Richard Wilbur explores how broken things are remade at the roots of mountains. The second poet laureate of the United States, Wilbur won two Pulitzer Prizes and the T.S. Eliot Award among many others.
I first came across this poem when studying the verse forms in Beowulf, and it now hangs on my wall, framed in an old wooden candle sconce that I found abandoned in an empty lot.
This image of the poem is captured from the Poetry Foundation because the formatting it too hard to duplicate.
Found this helpful info at Laudator Temporis Acti:
Wilbur prefaced his poem with a motto from the fragmentary Old English epic Waldere. …This is translated by Bruce Mitchell et al., edd. Beowulf: An Edition with Relevant Shorter Texts (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 1998), p. 209, as “Surely the work of Weland will fail not any of those men who can hold strong Mimming.” Weland was a smith, and Mimming was a sword.
