This is fantastic -- in the full sense of the word! I can't wait to go
there!
joanna
----- Original Message -----
From: "Knut Mork Skagen" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2005 3:08 PM
Subject: snap
> 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
>
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