Thor Sørheim: 'Møteplass'

 

MEETING POINT

 

It takes no more than that for me to stop

at a meeting point, where a brochure I’ve brought

with me on the trip claims there is a burial place

from the Stone Age close by. I enter the wood,

 

and right behind some pine trees on the knoll

I see the stones, neatly positioned in a ring. The circle

is the only line that can send us backward

in time, I stand at a dolmen and think

 

that I must not waken the dead. Not here,

or at Blomsholm near Strömstad or even at

Stonehenge, where the sun stands still for a few

seconds between the columns. We must leave

 

the dead in peace. But at this spot on the edge of the wood

the stones are covered by a flat flagstone. The burial place

invites one to a meal, and I sit myself down 

at the table, and forget that my car is illegally 

 

parked at the meeting point. That chance I’ll have to take.

Nothing would have amused me more that to get a fine

for having got into a chinwag with a gang of dead

friends from times much more interesting than this one.