GRENDEL'S AUNT (an original poem) - Part 1

In the novel I'm writing, this metered ode is written by a faery poet named Brighid. In pre-Christian Irish mythology, Brigid (spelled differently) was a member of the Tuatha Dé Danann, a supernatural race. She was the goddess "whom poets adored."

"Grendel's Aunt" follows a hero named Hymm who transacts a business deal with Dwenndis, aunt of the monster Grendel, from Beowulf. The first eight stanzas have already appeared in the first chapter of my novel. I include them here in the form of images to offer continuity, plus four new ones. My goal (and my hope) is to finish four stanzas per day, and post them here on Steemit. I'm hoping you'll see the humor, the economics, the allusions, and the poetic mechanics going on. It's one of the hardest things I've ever written, but also the most fun!

In a shell on Llyn Ogwen, he spied from behind
a most beautiful lady’s coiffure:
golden cilia, lengthened, like seaweed it swam.
His step on a twig prick’d her ear to the sound: quickly
toward Hymm she turned the sad face of a hound:
She was startled and morphed into bird!

“I am Dwenndis the Tuna-Tailed, Keeper of Gytha.
I manage these waters corruptly.”
She turned toward the bay, nothing further to say,
so this stanza will end now, abruptly.

“Good evening, good lady,” spake Hymm to the fowle.
His tone held the tamest of timbres,
and gently he started his meek introduction:
“I'm Hymm.” “You are he?” “Yes, a grammar malfunction;
my mother did name me a personal pronoun
in hopes I’d be harder to track.”

The mermaid return’d, melding scales with her feathers,
her face now a lady’s, and fine.
“You seem harmless enough. Please, Hymm, hand me my muff
and we’ll stroll through the shallows and gorge on some pysk!”
“I only eat pysk o’llyn boiled in a bisque.”
“Don’t like pysk? Well then, why are you here?”

Fairy image courtesy of pixabay.com