The stream

'thaes ofereode, thisses swa maeg' (Deor)

Absence is incontinent. It leaves
Shaming wet patches in obvious places.
Some people cry easily. I am one.

Not you.
--U.A. Fanthorpe & R.V. Bailey, excerpt of "Difficilior Lectio"

My thanks to WalkingMarj for introducing me to the love poems of U.A. Fanthorpe & R.V. Bailey, two women who loved each other and had the great good fortune to live together 44 years. They wrote these poems, the introduction tells us, quite often when one of them was away from home. My copy of their book arrived today.

This poem had to be part of my blip because the epilogue is a line of Anglo-Saxon poetry I have always loved. During my M.A. oral exam, in 1975, I quoted that line playfully, explaining that having survived the ten years it took me to work my way toward a B.A., I would certainly make it through this much smaller hurdle. My head professor, who was then on the brink of retirement, said that I was the first student he had ever examined who not only spoke Anglo-Saxon during her exam, but also pronounced it correctly. That line is, to this day, a great comfort to me and a kind of mantra.