Iceland
(you have to love a poem
that starts with "Iceland"
rarely has a nation's name
been such a poem to itself
except perhaps "Greenland"
situated so conveniently next door
and with such radically different landscape
and also "Zimbabwe")
Iceland
spreads like soft cheese
east coast ever eastwards
west coast ever westwards
creating an in between place
where
the land cracks, no, really,
it does, long thick black streaks,
the running mascara of the
earth's crust, some of them
steaming even -- you can't help but think
"what if my foot"
"my toes could just"
like being five years old again
trying to get off the escalator.
(Greenland has cracks, too; in the ice;
beautiful and blue; but not steaming, yet.)
On either side of this plain
there are cliffs: Europe rises
to the east. America to the west.
The rock faces of continents,
fresh-exposed. Oh (yes, "oh"!),
to build a home on this nameless space
between nations, to cook food
and draw heat from its secret bowls
of fire, and then, after sundown,
after sundown...hell,
I don't know. Maybe find a place
with less ice in it.
-- Trondheim, 12.10.05
|