Heimdall's Horn
by
Erika Ganz
1
Eastwards towards tors,
the sunlight on the water.
Time, blinded like Gloucester,
stumbling mid the crags
Birds in the sky.
Birds in the air.
Father Vater
Das Schiff, siehst du's noch nicht?
2
"Hey what's on TV tonight Daddy?"
"The Ed Sullivan Show, honey. 'The Monkees'."
"Yay!"
"Come on, come here and sit by Daddy."
Nur eine Stunde
nur eine Stunde
bleibe mir wach
O
Miss Nixon walks her dog on teatime's leash.
Frost-consummate ghost life, her sunglassed swish
Aching for cadence, criss and cross of shin;
Under a zircon lock: her martyr's skin.
And I am sure of needles threading laces;
And pearl-eyed jackals gibbeting their catch;
Of Ashtaroth's split hoof; but not her face's
Spilt limbs and ochre promises, the bitch.
O fille, pére, O:
Quelle âme est sans défauts?
A bullet cracked his pane of head. Bright sables,
Wild tongues of spine clenched, vaulting in their stables.
A currant vomit spilled across the tables.
Sirens: Penzance tarantara, and then
Deaf glances from dun passersby, as in
The ambulance he became a mannequin.
I whispered in her ear:
"You weep amid your dreaming hair,
Grave girl, with your unnerving blackthorn eyes.
What is it that pursues you there?
A verdigris
Presentiment of luminate pinfolds?
Tossed veined shawls with stipplings of spun gold?
Remember, beyond the nodding paths, worm cairns;
The stroke of rowers, easy in the swell,
Freshening the shallows; shoals asplash
With herons
and larksong
The light fringed reaches ebbing away, away:
Your breasts a maenad's trace:
Eyes fathomless, adrowse.
Like roundelays,
The exquisite darknesses gathering,
Prevarications neither eve nor dusk."
Fins fled into the cradling flickering hollows
And all at once we knew,
Behind bullet proof windows a
Man was placing the barrel
Of a gun to his temple.
3
Heimdall's horn:
In the forest hear it blow.
It pleases us to drive in sleighs
Across deep snow.
Baldur, the air
Is once more bright and clear,
Now Midgard is no more,
And Thule near.
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