In the earthworm-softened garden of one’s home village
the columbine still grows
and tall, slender, old-fashioned clocks tick in all the houses.
Smoke rises like sacrificial pillars from the hovels,
and for those who come from outside,
from the tough work on the oceans and Barcelona’s red light
district,
this peaceful village looks like a quiet lie.
A lie one would prefer to linger with,
a lie for which one would like
to trample all evil truths.
Anni, glittering eye.
Do you remember? We were seven years old then.
We hid inside a field of rye,
on top of that big rock they called—the giant’s tuft.
—All around us the yellow waves of rye.
—All around us a yellow bay of rye
surrounding a long spit of spruce forest.
Anni, do you remember the croft’s red beacon on the Cape Horn of
the woods?
Around our desolate island the ears of rye whispered, I kissed
you on the mouth,
blue field voles swam like whales out there in the middle of the
sea?
The sun and the crickets: porpoises in the grain?
Our foster mother arrived like a heavy barge.
Brought us home to the croft’s harbor.
Hazel stick beating and the whistle calls of distress. Do you
remember, Anni?
The fleet leaves for Dogger Bank now—
the fleet of food catchers, the smacks of Portsmouth—
deep in the gray-gray days at sea you can hear the London fog
echo
of trawlers, of northern Swedish lumber ships.
Now the pepper traders bound for Cochin China
bellow like coarse organs
as they leave the filthy Thames.
The sea owns many gray songs,
hard days, gray North Sea days—
deep in an October storm you don’t hear
humbled sailors play the harmonica.
The storm howls, no more sailor mandolins
chirp summer waltzes.
You turn hard during your gray watch,
you sort of lash down your inner feelings,
and you hardly have to be a Finn
to pull your knife in the docklands.