Nu scylun hergan...

Winter sceal geweorpan
weder eft cuman
sumor swegle hat,
sund unstille
deop deada waeg
dyrne bid lengest.
Holen sceal inaeled
yrfe gedaeled
deades monnes.
Dom bid selast.

...as the Da used to say.


But enough of these premature presentiments of Spring. It's been quite a bustling month already at the Ramen City International Headquarters; copy editors scurrying along the ramparts and battlements, fresh galleys in hand; presses squealing like a linguist who's just discovered a new fluid-s language tucked away on a forgotten peninsula.


Still, your editor finds the time to uncork a youthful madeira through whose tawny medium he views the world's vagaries with bemusement. Not to mention viewing our dear readers' letters.


First on our pile of reader's letters is this rather curious missive: "Chazzakh! Kit tebs mawf ash-shagh ariko vanda stems khanta? Tarraf ad-kumat'ia."

Fortunately I've retained in my possession a most singular monocle, ingeniously crafted by perfidious warlocks. Hewn from a single sheet of golden mica of an uncertain provenance and prepared under strict qabbalistic jiggery-pokery, it allows me to decipher the archangelic sigils in which the above-cited epistle was cunningly wrought.

In short, our reader asks, "Sir, could you provide us with a recipe extolling the virtues of the herb tarragon? I don't mean a Bearnaise sauce, either."

With pleasure: I enjoy a fillet of sole cooked in lemon juice flavored with mushrooms, green onions, paprika and a liberal dose of fresh-chopped tarragon. The essence of lightness and zest.

In our second letter, a young Zlatko Altandziev of Kalinkovo village, (People's) (Republic of) Macedonia requests that we "provide further examples of native English speakers' embarrassingly public errors involving misuse of vocabulary - for our general edification."

Certainly!


Take this from a recent edition of Yahoo News:

"The League already took on the movie world in 2006 to denounce the blockbuster "The Da Vinci Code" and its central tenant that Jesus Christ had a child by Mary Magdalene..."

While the Messiah's apartment may have been located in the center of His housing estate -I'm no expert on sacred geomancy- surely it's within the central tenet of the aforementioned dubious tract we are to understand the illicit tryst to have occurred. Or not.


Our final letter today wends its way softly to us from a Mrs. Joseph Leighton of Tulsa, OK, who asks that we "see your way to supplying us with a brief description of the noted Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu's cantata The Prophecy of Isaiah."

Nothing would give us greater pleasure; one of Martinu's final works before his untimely passing, an aura of gloomy resignation enshrouds the work, not unlike that we find delicately wreathed about the Mozart Requiem. An ominous trumpet snakes its way throughout the piece, tolling funereally like a submerged bell from some cathédrale engloutie.


The text, notably, contains no citations from Moravian folk poetry this time 'round, but is supplied entirely from the Bible. It is for male chorus. Curious readers eager to hear highlights of this terminal masterpiece may catch me down pub of a Friday eve (the later the better), when a warm, personal recital will be provided upon request.