THE RIDDLES


    1
    Who is so clever and quick-witted
    as to guess who goads me on my journey
    when I get up, angry, at times awesome;
    when I roar loudly and rampage over the land,
    sometimes causing havoc; when I burn houses
    and ransack palaces? Smoke rises,
    ashen over roofs. There is a din on earth,
    men die sudden deaths when I shake the forest,
    the flourishing trees, and fell timber –
    I with my roof of water, an avenger
    driven far and wide by the powers above;
    I carry on my back what once covered
    every man, body and soul submerged
    together in the water. Say what conceals me
    or what I, who bear this burden, am called.


    2
    Sometimes I plunge through the press of waves,
    surprising men, delving to the earth,
    the ocean bed. The waters ferment,
    sea-horses foaming ?
    The whale-mere roars, fiercely rages,
    waves beat upon the shore; stones
    and sand, seaweed and saltspray, are flung
    against the dunes when, wrestling
    far beneath the waves, I disturb the earth,
    the vast depths of the sea. Nor can I escape
    my ocean bed before he permits me who is my pilot
    on every journey. Tell me, wise man:
    who separates me from the sea's embrace,
    when the waters become quiet once more,
    the waves calm which before had covered me?


    3
    Sometimes my Lord corners me;
    then He imprisons all that I am
    under fertile fields – He frustrates me,
    condemns me in my might to darkness,
    casts me into a cave where my warden, earth,
    sits on my back. I cannot break out
    of that dungeon, but I shake halls
    and houses; the gabled homes of men
    tremble and totter; walls quake,
    then overhang. Air floats above earth,
    and the face of the ocean seems still
    until I burst out from my cramped cell
    at my Lord's bidding, He who in anger
    buried me before, so shackled me that I
    could not escape my Guardian, my Guide.

    Sometimes I swoop to whip up waves, rouse
    the water, drive the flintgrey rollers
    to the shore. Spuming crests crash
    against the cliff, dark precipice looming