The Nibelungenlingenlungenlied part I

this is my latest poem first dreamt up during my latter period of recovery in hospital

it is my version of the Siegfried the dragon slayer tale   and stylistically follows that of my earlier  "elen of the hosts"  and "robbinhood"

 

Originating in eddaic  scalds  and based on the  bad families  of the Sigurdy Volsunga saga

the  hero story was  retold to less effect  for medieval audiences  in   the Frankish  set and frankish directed  Das Niebelungenlied   more a "Nibelungen Not" where the  curse and the  volsunger magic are mere scenery   and as a tale  D.N  had little appeal   until caught up in   ill-conceived  attempt to create a Homer rivalling "great story of the North" with  over emphasis on the word "race"  

which  inspired    the  Arier  pitch  of    the musical Dassie versions   before the whole dragon slayer  treasure pile    epic  became hobbitual  in Tolkien's ruining of English myth

 

my new version   the Nibelungenlingenlungenlied will be published in the third collected volumes of my poetry

 

in the first part Siegfried  is a   aimless hero dragging his treasure behind him  and then  fantasising  by the fire encircled brunhilde  unable to summon the courage to ride into the flames

in the second part   having washed away Brunhilde  Siegfried is unfavourably compared to her previous suitors   and the wedding day  is   focused on prophecies of doom

 

 

 

Nibelungenlingenlungenlied

 

 

 

 

Woden trees being with wish rags

riders of the sky wild hunt

long fingers  one of us one of us

neither night 

mare before the Hecate

 

sunset

Siegfried split between two dwarves

wyrd weird

blonde hair and rings the very Teuton

bird eater dragon takes the jaw

Siegfried  at the dragons mouth

gold buries gold

 

sunrise

 dawn adulterous  on earth and sky

praying at a  shrine of pietas fear

Joseph and his child

baby wolf

 

Siegfried wears a red cap  beaker, crow , fat duck

hero

 with dragons teeth  sow retainers  invincibles

what teeth ?

he played knucklebones

played toss

threw bait to slowest fish

-army of one

 

 

A sword pointer than any sword

a horse racer than any horse

armour of chain no weapon can take  but with one weak link over the heart

chain pull

invisible helmet

invisible man

 

most beautiful women in the world

fair  hair like the raven before it took to bad ways

red lips white skin

like pack trampled ground

 

 

most beautiful woman in the world

as illiadated  by a middle aged crone in blackest syren

of classical goddesses flinging some Greek of no importance

off white girls  in  show men statuesque

pop the apple  prize   awarded rubbed smooth

"to the farthest"

 

given to the jolly ho traveller  out of the north pole

sleigh cresset with  wants and goods

boreal cheeks ,apple, nog, brandy

"up Prancer morning star"

goddess  fit for brandy

 

 

 

 

A fire seafaring silk

frester, flaming Helena and Elmo

 

fifty foot tall woman surrounded by a metric of fire

watching her through reeds

chase hair

brushing combing

 

lying flowers at the gather

last of her knife throwing act

bosom belly and words

 and words

broom  and words

invisible man

 

dreams  without flight

woman

broad serving at the boat burial of sexrex Saxon

lucky rex

three ages

of woman

bride, bracks, scold

 

Sieg  hero lied

rescued fair maiden  lied

 

 

looked at his horse  a hay dipper

looked at his sword a hay dipper

invisible man

fear

fire

 

 

 

 

solution worked out on his toes  And Or

bearing  quadral triangulium flow in  stone to stone rivers

 

he bathed

while rubbing himself  to sparks

understand cuck call feather speech 

something of animals

words of bliss as birds do in their aerials

jays balanced on  saint buckthorn  branches chaffer  profics of cunnings, traitors, dooms 

hugging and mugging crows

 

what hear

dirty minded birds -shags, albatossers

creeper

fur prey and compliment

a  fitting weasel  cries "where is my silver"

 

 

water fire

chapel and crib

 

terror in the lake

terrible in the lake

green knight

marsh gas

pot gas

 snake row

filling with water

bones for my supper

bones for her supper

 

carry water sorcered buckets

words  he knew no words                     

 

gravestone backed landowner  serfs  and wood wode grunting lithics 

 bent to rule a straight  Martian dying canali

paid in brass love pennies

 pennies that turned into  fractionals

oak leaves beyond the forest

 

 

bury summer

 marry summer

bury winter

marry winter

 

brushing combing

 

 

the Nibelungenlingenlungenlied  part I

Mark Littler 2015

life on mars as described in the works of Joseph Conrad and George Orwell

 

 

 

 

 

 

"I believed it in the same way one of you might believe there

are inhabitants in the planet Mars.

 I knew once a Scotch sailmaker who was certain, dead sure, there were people in Mars.

 

If you asked him for some idea how they looked and behaved,

he would get shy and mutter something about `walking on all-fours.'

If you as much as smiled, he would--though a man of sixty--

offer to fight you."

Joseph Conrad  Heart of Darkness

 

 

"sometimes he said   when sleeping on the embankment  it had consoled  him to look up at mars  or  Jupiter  and think there were probably embankment sleepers  there.

he had a curious  theory about it

life on earth  he said  is harsh  because mars is poor in the necessities of existence .

mars  with it cold climate  and scanty water must  be far poorer  and life corresponding  harsher

where as on Earth you  are  merely  imprisoned   for stealing sixpence

on Mars  you are probably boiled alive"

George Orwell  down and out in Paris and London 1933

 

 

 

two unexpected science  fiction  quotations   from  unrelated works  of English literature

Thuria, mad queen of heaven!

"Cluros, the farther moon, was just

rising above the horizon to commence his leisurely journey

through the heavens. Eight zodes later he would set--a trifle

over nineteen and a half Earth hours--and during that time

Thuria, his vivacious mate, would have circled the planet twice

and be more than half way around on her third trip. She had but

just set. It would be more than three and a half hours before she

shot above the opposite horizon to hurtle, swift and low, across

the face of the dying planet.

 

It was the age-old miracle of the

Martian nights that is always new, even to Martians--two moons

resplendent in the heavens, where one had been but now;

conflicting, fast-changing shadows that altered the very hills

themselves; far Cluros, stately, majestic, almost stationary,

shedding his steady light upon the world below; Thuria, a great

and glorious orb, swinging swift across the vaulted dome of the

blue-black night,"

 

The Chessmen Of Mars      Edgar Rice Burroughs

 

 

any of the few who saw the  dire "john Carter" will reember if anything of the  loosely based plot that  the two martian moons  in that movie  were lunar spheroids in close o double rbis showing identical phases  not the fast moving low horizon thuria    orbiting three times a night "nocturnal Martian scene one of splendid and weird

grandeur." as Princess of Mars   desscribes it

based as theey were on Deimos and Phobos  orbits  (albeit ERB moons   were  more Swiftan than  Hall) the main  plot  device in the Barsoom books was the difficulty of  anyone  to  hide  under Thurias rapid  binary bright light

 

see my illustration of bright  racing Thuria   near the horizon  larger Cluros in the sky and the evening star Earth

 

making a astronomical sighting quadrant out of a protractor and a drinking straw

Owing to my hospitization and slow recovery rather a later post than originally intended

I  made this quadrant in 2007 but am now unable to find it or any of my other   made

kits  such as the Astrolabes, Moon phase dial and Nocturnal  at home   believed thrown out as just  bits of cardboard during my long absence

 

Tycho and Hevelius made many discoveries  with just such great  quadrants

 but here I made a simple  altitude instrument  reading to 90 degrees  and  consisting  of a  protractor  (see  template ) to which an ordinary  drinking straw was  fixed  horizoniclly as a sight  and  from which a plumb line   free weight  dangled on the end of  a string  tied through a hole  seen as a small circle  just above 0 degrees on the template

 Completed  the quadrant can be sighted on any astronomical object  and the altitude read off  on the scale  arc from the dangling plumb line

It of course  can   be tested like any  quadrant   by sighting on  Polaris   according to your latitude

 

 

all you need is

a   90 deg protractor  either  the old one from maths class  or print out the template and affix to hard card

a drinking straw

string  to attach weigh  falling to arc of quadrant

a weight or plumb bob

 

hospitalization and major surgery but feeling alive again

recovering at home after five months i Hospitalization  from  February to July 2014  

 i was  rushed in for  emergency  abdominal surgery after collapsing  

  despite having  no prior symptoms   one early morning  sudden abdominal pain and  a ruptured  bowel wall  

 luckily operated on in time

very much a life changing experience

 

 

not exactly feeling six millions dollars    with a bowel resection and  have an  daily  dressing covering open wound in my lower abdomen  that is   23cm across

 have to wear a " abdo support"  to  literally stop  my guts  falling out and resemble a Mayan "chac  moo"l figure

 

 

 

no selfies on instragram  nor tweets  from the operating theatre   as  unaware where I was until April

  and  communicated   for weeks  via an alphabetic   pointing  board  

only  able to walk again late may

not something to blog about

 

a long period of recovery over the next year    and realisation that the internet is not everything

email either MIA    cancelled  or compromised  did not have energy or interest y to access internet  during this   home recovery period

sick people writing about their operations dull to anyone  else and prime target for trolling anyway

 

blog   i was working on  posts which i thought i had put on in February   on

 

  a blog post on how  the dream of  a ghostly  medieval knight  warned of the sinking of an ocean liner in 1909

a blog post on  the meridian of Azin  and medieval navigation

a  blog post on  making a quadrant from cardboard and drinking straws

a blog post  on Orion constellation as seen from the distance 11 to 100 light years

a blog post of star trek villain  khans  night sky as seen from ceti alpha 6

a blog post on  Eleanor Plantagenet  1203 -1241  rightful queen of England

a blog post on life on Mars as described  in the writings  of Joseph Conrad and George  Orwell

 

 my last published poem in december was  on the subject of leonardo  da vinci as a body snatcher serial killer

my  rewrite version of the Nibelungenlied  survives in pencil notes that are scribble i cannot read

A mummy goes west

hard pyre  and nineteenth century values

a spelled Egyptian king  comes to catch the  faking life

no it is a shadow

yes its paint

 below pharaoh     his  gods were  snakes

 

poor bone cold   up from the river    with only a curse to his name

 

 

arise!  arise!

 get out of your dusty  box   napkin face   knotted hankie  beast    cottontail

bang bandage  hands  around the  white throat  of   a plump  clergyman  

his  cross  crushed  by your ankhy  cross of life 

 

more floating baggage  without  grime scrolls or three colour poster

in a   hall  of pin copper pitch play lude wonders

a muffled princess  shipped with bier

 he smells her sept 

lust for scarab   and scabie

 goes out the door   to London flesh

penny paper fog and  gas lamp sothis

ladies  of   vampire ice  feeding on  nurse maids 

Ripper Jack  cuts to  dusk

 

"A Mummy goes West"Mark  Littler  January  2013

 

2070 a year to cross the road

 

 

 

 

 

 

Having regular   REM dreams of the  future  and that  now a days everyone drives around  like  Noddy   it  has never surprised me to wake up   remembering  that by  2070  no one knows  what an automobile is    

 

The  automobile  going the way of a    society   with its vital   job roles of  knowledge focus  engineers,   Paid friends  for  Nano  People,  request  food  designers   and Religion managers

All I could remember  was  by 2070   why do you need a  automobile if you have  after  death  consciousness, separation of body  and  soul   and Permanent   happiness  as a  lifestyle  choice

 

oh and the after effects of a   forty year long   society  destroying   ultimate  world  war  does  not help   automobile  sales  either

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

written little poetry  since october   and what I have done  not good enough

  always  know the  future is  better