NORWAY: THE SUM OF CONVERGENCES
For Johan Schimanski
Norway! – you make my passions stream through my nostrils while also making me think that whatever thought is, it doesn’t matter.
Norway! – your mossy green sticks to my eyes and your smell hits me hard in my gut turning it into Babylon.
Norway! – I speak your tongue but my phonetic rules are transgrammatical.
Norway! – your sheep and goats acknowledge my presence which makes me grab them by their hind legs and turn them on their heads so that their bleating scores a higher pitch. The less banal is constructed without sacrifice.
Norway! – I want to go to Tromsø where all the boa-deconstructors went. Su-pli-ca-tion. They all believed in supplication. I want to believe in supplication. The boas in the temple of silence, counting on meshless methods.
Norway! – your aurora borealis makes me crazy. Cra-zy. I point three fingers at the absent trees and think that I’m Huldra. Invisible to all, but my own fingers. Your winds touch them, your waters love their caresses, your forests eat them getting intoxicated.
Norway! – if you were not Norway, I would be Norway, allowing tourists and lovers like myself to enter me only on the 12th of the month, each year, each century, each hour. On the 12th hour love time is camping time. The million of Dutch drivers passing through you can testify.
Norway! – I want your peaks to be hot saunas, and your lakes monoi oil on my body.
Norway! I love you, as I spit into your rivers thinking: Panta rhei.
Norway! – you make my passions stream through my nostrils while also making me think that whatever thought is, it doesn’t matter.
Norway! – your mossy green sticks to my eyes and your smell hits me hard in my gut turning it into Babylon.
Norway! – I speak your tongue but my phonetic rules are transgrammatical.
Norway! – your sheep and goats acknowledge my presence which makes me grab them by their hind legs and turn them on their heads so that their bleating scores a higher pitch. The less banal is constructed without sacrifice.
Norway! – I want to go to Tromsø where all the boa-deconstructors went. Su-pli-ca-tion. They all believed in supplication. I want to believe in supplication. The boas in the temple of silence, counting on meshless methods.
Norway! – your aurora borealis makes me crazy. Cra-zy. I point three fingers at the absent trees and think that I’m Huldra. Invisible to all, but my own fingers. Your winds touch them, your waters love their caresses, your forests eat them getting intoxicated.
Norway! – if you were not Norway, I would be Norway, allowing tourists and lovers like myself to enter me only on the 12th of the month, each year, each century, each hour. On the 12th hour love time is camping time. The million of Dutch drivers passing through you can testify.
Norway! – I want your peaks to be hot saunas, and your lakes monoi oil on my body.
Norway! I love you, as I spit into your rivers thinking: Panta rhei.
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Comments
"These things...that you are going to have-
Are you paid specially for them?"
"Yes."
"And when it is over, do you insist,
Do you insist that the visitor leave the room?"
"My activity is as random as the wind.
Why should I insist? The visitor is free to go,
Or to stay, as he chooses."
Are you folks just going out for a walk
And if you are would you check the time
On your way back? It's too late to do anyting today.
I would just take a pratfall if I stepped outside that door.
"I don't know whether I should apply or nothing."
"I think you should make your decision."
So it was by chance we found ourselves
Gumshod on the pebbled path, Denmark O Denmark
Flat, rounded eyes, Denmark Denmark
Gray parchment landscape Denmark O Denmark
Unmanageable sky, Denmark that cannot shift
The faucet drips, the minutes apply, Denmark.
From John Ashbery, The Double Dream of Spring (1970)