Sunday 25 August 2013

Klaus Høeck: 'past' from 'LIVE'

                  past


                  no – that’s not correct
i must take back what i have
                  said gunderslev skov
                  is even more beau
tiful is the most beauti
                  ful in the country
                  here where a ship of
stone has stranded in a huge
                  foundering between
                  two eternities
washed up in the surf of net
                  tles under an oak

                  please stop oh wheel at
this outcrop of the past – i
                   say to my bike which
                  i get off and then
clamber aboard the shipwreck
                  the time amongst haw
                  thorn and groundsel con
vinced of interdependence
                  via stones and years
                  connected to death
only separated by
                  a single second

                  no poem is written
on a blank sheet of paper
                  but on other writ
                  ing it partly e
rases and partly intens
                  ifies no story
                  comes solely out of
itself but from tradition –
                  i’m literally
                  standing on histor
ic ground writing on a
                  prehistoric find

KH is referring to the dolmen found in the wood at Gunderslev that was visited by N.F.S. Grundtvig in 1808. After his visit, Grundtvig wrote a poem about the dolmen. You can see how it looked in 1857 and looks now by going here.
 

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