100. In Tartantie Forever

 

I have no memory | of forgetting

what | I did not remember about you

there were the birds | awake

all night | because there was no night

to sleep them | though there was darkness

in small stretches | between not sleeping

words | I remember words | words

spoken | in languages known and

Finnish | words written down

words drawn out | and on the page

words cut out of paper | and plastic

even words | projected onto screens

I have no memory | of not forgetting

all of this | as if it were a dream

about reality | so too true to believe

the space | had the name of a river

and the voices of birds | within it

the water of their voices | never

running dry | the leaves always

in rustle | the blue sky forever

 

if you could tell me | what it was

about | I would be obliged

having not the recollection of

the meaning | the word was meant

to have | but didn’t carry | so lost

was I | those days | in thought

a real thing almost never | happened

there may have | been a yurt and

people dancing | with such joyous

fury | their arms and faces a blur

I could not make out | the shapes

of their faces | only their joy

something wild | as if a people

kept too long | in cold and darkness

maybe they married | maybe a man

a descendant of Vikings | dove

into a small pond | only a little

darker than the night | around it

there may have been drinking and

music | all I remember is the vihta

 

I remember forgetting | a great hall

a darkness | within a greater darkness

though I don’t know if | that larger one

was the universe | or merely something

I imagined out of | a dream of mine

the one about | me singing and

then crawling | something plaintive

my voice erratic | made out of pain

something that painted | that space

a little darker | still

yet | I could be entirely mistaken

it may be | and this is only a guess

a large man | reeled off a long and

musical | yet possibly psychotic

nonsense poem | in Icelandic or

maybe someone | reprised a song

once sung in Canada | from a rowboat

I am likely mistaken | I often am

it is likely we drove for hours to find

the sea | yet never reached Tartantie