The Green Knight

January 1, 2022 at 5:01 am (Books, Recommended)
Tags: Fridays, poetry, reading lists, Simon Armitage, translation

A look of lightning flashed
from somewhere in his soul.
The force of that man’s fist
would be a thunderbolt.

Yet he wore no helmet and no hauberk either,
no armored apparel or plate was apparent,
and he swung no sword nor sported any shield,
but held in one hand a sprig of holly —
of all the evergreens the greenest ever —
and in the other hand held the mother of all axes,
a cruel piece of kit I kid you not.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: a new verse translation by Simon Armitage