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In The White Night


something is beneath the surface
a dragon in the lake

how else does this steam rise
from the black volcanic beach

the sun won't set but makes its round
strolling a circle of horizon

we stayed up so late talking about the past
it was like an extra dawn breaking

on the promenade in the white night
old couples, baby carriages, wheelchairs

I was surprised by the indifference I felt
for my old best friend—sleep

you said: you're going to like the waterfall
because the road ends there

how did you know
I like being able to not go further

and you said: Mir
I've known you for a very long time

 

Sod House


This past is full of smoke
And dark
In the windowless long house.

Although the folk are regal
And the epic story
Praises the beauty of queens
The strength of farmers.

The song might settle on a feast
Or the revenge
Against rapacious suitors
Of the wise weaver.

Or the hero
Might ask for a lock
Of hair
From his mother and his ill-tempered wife
To string his long bow
One more time.

Turf is piled on stone,
The fire pit is
Empty if Homeric,
Scanned verse will break
In caesura—
Pause named for the general
Who ruled the world we
Will agree is the world.

Buried beneath volcanic pumice
Wiped off its own map
Like Pompeii
With its muralled house of mysteries
The whipped girl in red
Initiate to Ceres,
Soldiers who follow Mithras
Who slays a solar bull
As if anticipating the cross that will come
Even to this far island in a storm.

 

 

Embroidery


a pattern of knots in long-armed cross-stitch
like a girl who waits for a long armed husband

or who has knit out of her own hair
a cape and a hat that are somehow alarming

the woof of the loom is weighted by stones
the weaving turns to blood in the old saga

a hundred swans paddle on the ocean
two swans swim in the stitched sampler

the town museum holds an entire wooden boat
how much more difficult—the ship in the bottle

each object a little melancholy—
a button, a font, a rusted implement,

dream of a teacup, chipped in the waves
and wake to a pocketful of shells

the swans have all flown away
except for the white ones on the black apron.

 

 

Mt. Katla

 

Mt. Katla sleeps beneath the ice
When she awakes (for all mountains are she)
Darkness
Of volcanic ash
Blacks out aurora borealis.

A magma chamber is her heart
Like a bird trapped in the turf house
Like the soul that has flown
Into the body
Or words stuck in the throat.

Four chambers beat
Day and night
In a cage of bone
Or fire in the mountain's caldera—
Liquid stone.