King Eystein and Mr. Mourinho

Well, I wrote this really long blog entry thingy, but reading it back it just looked bloated and flatulent and self-important. So I've done you the favor of deleting it :  here's the edited highlights. I guess this makes it kind of interactive : if you don't think it's a brilliant analysis of a complex topic,, it's because you've misunderstood my genius.

1.  Press conferences after the Spanish Cup Final.

2.  Ego, the Living Planet ( with picture ).

3.  School management.

4.  Jesse's Song from Ugly Betty. See it here :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiRBoewcU4k

5.  Two football quotations.

6. And where I wanted to finish up : King Sigurd and King Eystein, by Sheenagh Pugh.

I've known and loved this poem for more than 25 years. Sheenagh took the incidents described from one of the Old Norse sagas . I love the way she uses the punctuation to say so much, and the placing of the word "kinsman" in the last line.When I first read the poem in 1985, I thought " Boo to King Sigurd ! " As you grow older, of course, and re-read the poem, the penny drops that we've all got a bit of Sigurd and a bit of Eystein somewhere in there.Oddly enough, for a poem written in the early 1980s, it strikes a chord with the whole Facebook phenomenon.

King Sigurd and King Eystein, by Sheenagh Pugh

( From an incident in Heimskringla Saga : Snorri Sturlusson ).

"When I went to fight in Saracen country,
seven times I had the victory,
and where were you, kinsman Eystein, then ? "

Northwards in Vaage, building the fishermen
smoke-houses; they have work all seasons now.

"In Apulia I did not see you
on my crusade; where were you at that time ?"

Setting up inns on the road out of Trondheim
where night frosts used to freeze the traveller.

"I saw Christ's tomb; I did not see you there."

At Agdaness the ship-grave, I had made
a harbour, to save men's lives when I am dead,
and but for my life, it would be worse for them.

"What were you doing, brother, when I swam
the Jordan river, or when I tied a knot
by the bank, and promised my kinsman should come out
on that holy journey, and untie it again ?"

I was bringing under our rule the Jemte men,
not with war, but with good words. And a man unties
the knot he finds, kinsman, where he is.


I just love that poem : also ( English Lit. hat on, kind of Shakespearean thing with a feather in the top ) full of clever, subtle music. Look at how the brothers' words echo each other through rhymes and half-rhymes. 

King Sigurd and King Eystein is taken from Selected Poems by Sheenagh Pugh, quoted here with permission. This, like all her poetry as far as I know, is published by Seren Books.  Her website is worth looking at:

http://sheenagh.webs.com/