The cosmos was a single realm where chaos held wide dominion.
Odin and his brothers, strong and bold,
Rose against Ymir, named for his primal scream,
The formless tide of dark that churned within.

With purpose drawn, they cleft the ancient void

And shaped the raw to forge a world adorned.

From Ymir’s flesh, they carved the earth and sky,
The mountains high, the valleys deep and vast.
They summoned forth the oceans, raised the stars,
And in each breath, the echo of his cry
Resounded in the wind’s unending moan, 
The heartbeat of a cosmos newly born.

In harmony, Bragi, Odin’s golden son,
Wove strands of chaos into symphonies.
His notes, like fireflies adrift in dusk,
Danced through the dark and called the heavens down.
The chords proclaimed the balance of the worlds,
Where high and low embraced in sacred rhythm.

Each tune a story, every word a life,
Wrought from the raw and aching womb of void, 
A tapestry, the soul of civilization
Arising from the tremor of a scream.
The voice could rise, could fall, could soar aloft,
And through it all, the human heart could sing.

In tales of warriors, in love long lost,
In every whisper borne on ancient wind,
The arts took root in the fertile ground of thought,
Each crafted line suspended out of time.
A rhythm pulsed through the veins of every realm, 
Immortal, echoing through countless kin.

Yet Ymir’s voice still lingers in the land,
The primal source that gave both gods and men.
For in each sonnet, in each fateful word,
Rests the memory of that first, long cry:
The raw beginning, vast as winter’s night,
From which the very breath of life still flows.

Let them sing, the bards of old and new,
With voices bound to echoes of the past.
For in their songs, the cosmos draws its breath, 
A harmony that binds us to the stars
And shapes the formless into living truth,
A bridge from chaos unto sacred order.

[Murray Eiland is a poet and archaeologist.]