Poem Seven: Glacier
The sea is frozen inside me and inside all of us. - Franz Kafka
*
I know this house.
House made of ice
and bone. Requiem
of white snow.
Imagine a yellow swallow shaping
the landscape with its song.
Can the sound
of a cello raise the dead?
Shell, bone and feather.
The wilting of water,
syntax of snow,
soprano of meltwater,
alto of the rising tide.
Can music raise the dead?
Possession by water.
Possession-
by melodies rise like currents
of water traced by the strings
of a sinking violin.
Water fills our veins.
Anchor in the refrain:
let us build a house to live in.
Bone, wood and stone.
Fishing hook and net.
Let the arrow of this song
be possessed by the spirit
who lives inside
of the glacier.
Call back the spirit
who lives inside the glacier.
Call the spirit.
Call the glacier home.
The sea is frozen inside me
and inside all of us.
*