Aliens in This World

Carney’s translation of “Is mebul dom imradud” (By an anonymous monk, about 1000 AD.)

A shame on my thinking
How it wanders away
It will cause me embarrassment
on Last Judgement day.

At psalm time it rushes forth
on a pathway that’s odd
running, raving, misbehaving
in the presence of God.

To merry women’s company
(the unvirtuous kind),
through wood and through cities,
faster than the wind.

When road is smooth it travels
merrily and gay,
but passes just as easily
the impenetrable way.

It needs no ship to journey
and the seas go by,
jumps with but a single leap
from solid earth to sky.

Put a fetter on its leg,
chain it to prayer?
Yes! But in a minute’s time
it’s no longer there.

Little use in beating it,
plying whip or rod:
like an eel’s tail it slips away
from my grasp and from God.

No chain and no dark dungeon
will hinder its course;
it laughs at seas and fortresses,
is mocking of force.

Dear Christ, lord of chastity,
chain thinking in place
with power of Spirit septiform
and all His grace.

Make, great elemental God,
the heart be still,
that You be my only love
and I, Your will.

May I come to Christ at last,
and then to see
that He is no unsteady thing,
nor wandering, like me.