‘i will dwell in my name’
night rain once again
after the long dry spell in
the month of july
for a long time i
lie listening to the drum
ming on the tin roof
will it fertilise
my own roots deep down there
in the dark will the
drops fall over the
forgotten grave of my fa
ther in birkerød?
today i array
myself in a white shirt and
a silken tie i
begin to search for
a document at the back
of the drawer of
the writing desk it
seems to me that my hands have
a smell of forma
lin about them i
look up from my poems and
thirty years have passed
the sky has been rent
by light and the dark congealed
at the bottom of
yesterday’s coffee
cups i am looking at that
pen-and-ink drawing
of my father with
the seven black pine trees that
hangs out in the hall
how on earth am i
to remember what even
he had forgotten?
like the vast fields of
roses up behind the em
bankments near bogen
se like a single
quartet movement – allegro
assai for exam
ple like overheat
ed aluminium or
like a thin drizzle
is the secret life
that i never lived toge
ther with my father
i sleep with my head
facing north as in fairy
tales and i dream
almost allegor
ically of salt and of
the larch boletus
before waking at
your sharp scent of ascorbic
acid my love – per
haps it is an act
of treachery to be so
utterly happy?
time flies past on the
wings of a buzzard in ac
ross the garden so
swiftly that it is
only this morning that i
discover the chan
ges and notice that
i have come to resemble
my father as he
was on the final
photograph taken of him
all that time ago
i take back my name
i retake in the liter
al sense of the word
its dark syllables
of iron and of emerald
after almost for
ty years in exile
sign with my baptismal name
once more i transform
myself into who
i am closer i’ll never
get to my father
i practise in the
utmost secrecy writing
it down in chinese
notebooks that have red
corners and are dog-eared i
whisper my name in
great confidenti
ality once more as i
used to do in my
childhood when it was
embroidered on all my li
nen and my washing
i will dwell in that
name i have received by the
grace of god and not
by it being grant
ed with the royal seal of
frederik the ninth
i will make my a
bode in the name i one day
will die in and clo
ser i’ll never get
to a reconcilia
tion with my father
my father in ti
voli at the palladi
um and in vester
brogade my fa
ther in köthen-anhalt my
father’s black dachshund
his royal enfield and
toyota my father’s kid
ney stone my father
at the piano
in holsteinsgade: quasi
una fantasia
why did my father
spend his time in germany
during the war why
did he send me a
subscription to B.T. in
my time at school why
did he not come to
my confirmation why did
he hide bottles of
port in the cistern
why did he die without giv
ing any answers?
i never knew my
father have only heard a
bout him and seen him
from time to time (with
such a shaky hand that the
spanish coffee ser
vice still clatters in
my head still spins round on its
bamboo pole in the
chinese circus of
the memory) only met
him from time to time
like some parricide
i had turned my memory
into a secret
and inaccessi
ble place where my father lived
alone with his shame
his silk embroidered
eagle on the reverse side
of his lapel or
was all of it no
thing else than lies and poe
tic fabrication?
my inheritance
from my father amounts as
far as i can as
certain and recall
thirty years after his death
to astigmati
sm of the left eye
a certain melancholy
a surname and a
share in a summer
cottage near rørvig strand one
that’s been sold long since
did my father real
ly marry no less than five
times is it true that
he pawned my christen
ing present (a spoon of hall
marked silver with bite
marks on it from my
milk teeth) is he really to
blame is his absence
to blame for the fact
i have been seeking god (the
father) ever since?
birkerød ceme
tery is beautiful on
such a late autumn
day red with rust and
brick as if it lay partial
ly hidden in a
sonnet cycle but
i found neither my father
nor his grave here nor
his ghost of turquoise
could it be he had simply
never existed?
nor up at the gen
eral registry under the
neon lighting was
his name to be found
in violet ink in the
city records where
the accounts are kept
my father had disappeared
without trace and i
myself was the on
ly evidence that he had
ever existed
it shot through the roots
of my family tree like
lightning from an un
derground storm or the
pain from root surgery at
the dentist’s or like
st elmo’s fire from
søllerød cemetery
where i at long last
had managed to trace
my family’s and father’s
final resting place
and a great recon
ciliation took place as
my father rose with
in me like an x
ray photo dark with night-time
rain and alumin
ium and the small
bitterness dissolved like salt
in my blood like a
thimble of hemlock
juice that’s emptied into the
sea and disappears
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