Thor Sørheim: 'Rutengjenger'

 

DIVINER

 

Nobody can claim with certainty that a dowsing rod, 

carved from a hazel bush and carried by a diviner

who holds it tightly with both hands with the point

twisting upwards, will twitch downwards and quiver towards 

the stone slab when passed over mineral deposits deep down

 

in the rock. Nobody, hand on heart, can say that it is impossible

for a diviner who walks cautiously through the forest

over heather and stony soil to feel that there is iron down

there along a fault line formed two million years

ago. I am no diviner when standing here at Gruvebakken,

 

which Tobias Kuper pointed out after having searched for ore

here in the 17th century. But I choose to believe that people

exist who with eye and hand can sense minute changes in nature

and the seasons. Like vigilant animals along pathways they will sense

with a rod that forebodes dangers lurking in covetous hearts.

I would refer you to Seamus Heaney's poem 'The Diviner' as analysed here. Also to a poem recently published on the blog on a similar theme by the Dutch poet Ida Gerhardt here.