Forgotten Ground Regained

After the Flood

This poem won the 1984 Caedmon Prize for poetry in the Old English style (awarded by Ða Engliscan Gesithas, a British historical society). It was originally published in the society's journal, Withowinde 70, Fall 1984
Noah is discovered lying on his back on a double bunk bed constructed of boards. It should not be hard to recognise him as Noah: he is in every way the conventional figure of a patrlarch, with long hair and a fu1I beard, both grey, and a simple loose robe of coarse cloth, and the low namow roo, in whlch he is lying can hardly be anythlng but his and his wife’s cabin in the Ark, wlth heavy beams overhead, and just off the foot of 'the bed a snall square window, now open to show a patch of clear blue sky, but equlpped with a square wooden side-wise sliding cover which in its closed positlon would obviously make the wlndow nearly watertight. Waking up, he stirs, twists, mumbles, clears his throat, mumbles some more, then draws his head up higher on the pillow, runs his open hands over his face, opens his eyes, cornposes himself, and begins to speak in a low voice, but audlbly.
My dreams are still ‧ of the dry ages.Waking, I weep ‧ for the world’s drowning,I, Noah, that knew ‧ it could never last. (he does, in fact, weep silently)What a fool I felt, claiming foreknowledge,mad maunderer, mediatingvisions and voices ‧ for very truththat everyone knew ‧ were airy delusion!As I preached, how prim ‧ and proud everyonecalled me – they dubbed me ‧ “damned hypocrite”!They said I set ‧ myself in judgmentof their wills and their ways, but how well I knewsoft life, liquor, love, revelry.I so dote on drink ‧ that I dream this momentof grapes growing ‧ in a great vineyard.And my maid Miriam, mother of Ham, her embrace in bed ‧ made my beard tingle;losing her, I lost ‧ my life, nearly.No, I was hardly ‧ holier than they,but God’s governance, gravitatingfrom his sovereign seat, singled me out. Though I winced and wailed ‧ as his will openeditself to my sight, and insisted onliving my life ‧ as I liked, nevera move that I made ‧ diminished his rule.Free will’s working ‧ is wondrous strange.
Comments of the Caedmon Prize Commitee
... a notable demonstration of the vigorous poetic life the old metre can still show when the action of its varied rhythms is allowed to play unmuffled by too many unstressed syllables.
Copyright © Charles Robert Sleeth, 1984. Reprinted with the permission of his family.
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