#1994 - all of us under the mountain

 

1994

6.168

17.vi.25

all of us under the mountain

ekphrastic for Kyarval’s 1941 ‘Fjallmjölk / Mountain Milk’

 

stone is so many shapes still

mountain making in each odd inch

 

the moss like a thought lain

for a hat

for a sky

 

once there was going into the mountain

that was to the other world

with a wheel, with a sword, with a boat

 

first of all dreaming

makes mountains of air

 

even here the sea in the soul

 

the whip and the ship

the faith of a fish

 

it’s this sea always beside me

 

the world rubs turning

heaven grey

 

no one was ever as big as the world

 

we have to imagine gods

in sheep’s clothes and country

 

no one snores like the sea

and it’s coming

 

by cliff and myth

as butter’s churned

 

you know the mountain from nowhere

know it for its lambwhite doom

 

the milk of it, a sky in stages

 

comes in a tumbling rush

 

for least breezes a palace

 

a gentle dusk

bearing the rain about

 

the hoar frost saints’ beards

our wedding cake angels

 

come down the mountain, in its hot pursuit

 

the mountain is not here to make sense

weird, these leavings of time

 

it’s all this cast of eyes up

to get above the world

 

to imagine ice for the dice to roll

 

no one was ever as real as

all that we have to imagine

 

the picture of just what’s there

not a patch on how it is

 

 

 

.

 

 

original draft (before expansion)–

 

 

all of us under the mountain

ekphrastic for Kyarval’s 1941 ‘Fjallmjölk / Mountain Milk’

 

stone is so many shapes still

mountain making in each inch

and the moss like a thought lain

for a hat

for a sky

 

the world rubs turning

heaven grey

 

by cliff and myth

as butter’s churned

 

comes all in a tumbling rush

 

a gentle dusk

 

the mountain, in its hot pursuit

 

weird, these leavings of time

 

 

 

and a more general Kyarval poem I drafted when I was in Iceland eight years ago

Kjarval

 

the head full of other heads

 

full of the land

full of the sea

full of light

with no explained source 

 

it rings with

here a ship sinks

here stars are hauled

we're one step too far to be here

 

spring lives in the picture

the legend is

how once upon a palette

green truth caught quartz

how lava takes on the brush

still today

 

the mountains are a trick of calligraphy

milk flows like a bible declared

 

you have to bring the farm inside

it's always winter that light

and all of these voyages

river

sea itself

 

telling

and telling

all the long night

 

see shadows

where the sun once stood

 

and then there's only ice

 

every colour and none

in the thaw when it comes

 

all in a bottle

and drink!