Hail to Hyndla, First Bloodwalker,
She who never sleeps now,
But roams endless trails of corpuscules,
Leukocytes, and platelets, pulsing signposts
From line to line, tracing their movements
From beginning to end and back again,
Through every birth-fed branching,
Through each deviation and mutation,
Backwards and forwards, criss-crossed, static --
A never-ending web, like woven wyrd,
Yet marked by blood red as a home sunset,
Or dawn breaking warily on a foreign shore.
 
Hail to Hyndla, oldest of the old
Save for the black one who dwells
Far away in the wildly burning etin-lands,
And the three who weave the loose ends
Of orlog and maegan into the web with which
They capture the shards of possibility.
Hail to the Grandmother of Grandmothers,
Who knows the tribal tales in truth or fiction,
Reality or fancy, etched alive by the lines
In the palm of everyone She meets.
Look into Her eyes and see your destiny
Reflected back in the blood that covered you
When you slipped, gasping and outraged,
From your mother’s dark and secret embrace.
 
Hail to Hyndla, Wise-woman of the North,
In Your dusty cave, on a pile of furs,
The open sky beyond, Your guardians
Wearing the forms of wolves and great cats,
Flickering through trees, watching in silence
For the thrown spear or that chanted malice.
Yet You are not afraid, mighty Witch of Kin-seeking,
For You know the secrets behind Aesic thrones,
Vanic altars, glittering Alf glamour,
Behind the crafty wit of a Duerg, the schemes
And lies of mortal men, and the roars and silences
Of your own wild folk. You know all of us
From front to back, outside and in, down
To the last chromosome, and You know
That deep-planted truth which cannot be hidden
By disguise or deceit, denial, or that determination
To destroy what cannot be unmade.
 
You alone know us as we really are, and as
We might one day hope to be, man or immortal.
And for this, we hail You, Hyndla, Grandmother,
Old One, Bloodwalker, whose sight is keenest of all.