Three hundred years must pass
before I walk the black sands
knowingly, before I milk the silence
like a cactus. This tiny echo
of wind, you are the only
visible through the clouds.
Don't speak your hardened tongue
lest I remember humanity
and realize this is a place
like any other,
where we paint concentric rings
around each mouth-
ravines, sheep, glaciers,
rainbows ensnared in a waterfall's hollow.
I want to imagine them all
free of poetry, myself
free of eyes.
Those three hundred years I have
to give, willingly, like the centuries
already passed in Austria, Czech,
my enraptured Americas, and my tears
left to ruin in Greek olive fields.
Iceland, you are today's monument to escape,
alabaster skin and armless marble.
Workhorse of the north, ripple of cold sea.
Every stone I skip red across your sky
hits gray water. I go to die
in your Northern Lights and to live
in the hillside doors you paint for trolls.
Flushed in fire and snow, bloodstained clay,
martyrs of apron and shovel.
What we call Icelandic is your drum.
The beat consumes the dawn,
sulfuric breath, rhythm pounding
rock, uneven surf.
Seduce me with foreign fingers,
upturn my soil, then leave me
in your nameless cemetery,
among the poets who tried
to curry favor of the borderless.