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.