Torild Wardenær: 'Velde' (XIII-XV)

VELDE XIII

Cargo

The quartz sparkles under me, and Erica tetralix, the heather that

smells so sweet, has become almost transluscent after over three thousand summers.

All are in the same boat on this rock engraving, for an elongated ship has been

carved here, and it is this ship which is to transport sun and

stick humans through days and lands of the dead.

Here the bronze-age kids used to swarm. Their high-pitched cries, in an

Indoeuropean language, flew across the water: ‘flounder, fish, catch’ – so close that I

can almost hear them. The gulls seem to be familiar with their strange-sounding

proper names, have borne them with themselves through the ages, and now

they imitate them, and screech them riotously at each other.

But the fjord glitters in cautioning fashion, and I harden myself against the evening

and the diminishing gull cries. For the string their sounds quiver along, between

wild and controlled, is the same string I sense that I am vibrating together with,

that which produces oscillation upon oscillation, that which causes the ship to

sail, and also the fjord to ruffle and darken now towards the island.

And nothing gladdens me more than this: that we are in the same boat,

that we shall sail under this clear-cut sun for a while

and not thereafter.

VELDE XIV

Terrain

When past and future come to blows to form one of these bloody moments,

I clear out of the house before something more fatal can take place.

I run until I reach top speed, and the endomorphins send a clear message:

Do not doubt, this is now, life itself.

I gain new courage, greet the troops as I pass by, an army of living beings

at their station. Run across the square, pass the harbour area with its

sea-going ships, pass the 19th century building that houses

exhibited oil paintings of the coronation in Byzantium, still lifes of crows and

begone scenarios with shepherds and stone pines. I end up as expected in

a cornfield, hold myself camouflaged there for a while, but am recognised by

a red neck-stain and brown top-feathers as I continue to hunt along the

treeless wetlands.

When it begins to ache in my hamstrings and muscles, I fling myself onto

the grass, make a trap out of leaves and earth-coloured material, place it out

in the terrain.

Into it several examples of organic life stray,

along with quantities of unidentified atoms, and

when the catch starts to become immense,

I have to release it,

into the wide expanse of landscape,

into uninhibited time.

VELDE XV

Flight towards the 873rd hang-out

When the unsecured frontiers, with forestland, big cities and barrens,

spread heavily out around us, it would be safest to stick to a feather-light

centre, gaze straight ahead, become one with the molecules.

But the distinctive odour we give off, of serum and protein, lets nocturnally

active creatures pick up our scent, and the allegedly feather-light centre

dissipates, as do the unreliable cumulus clouds.

Knees and elbows, stiffened with cartilage and magnesium, rattle and

shake and reveal us further. Teeth chatter, neurons fire off

warning shot after warning shot to no avail, and flight towards yet another

hang-out, perhaps the eight hundred and seventy-third, is inevitable.