I returned to a long strand,
the hammered curve of a bay,
and found only the secular
powers of the Atlantic thundering.<\/p>\n
I faced the unmagical
invitations of Iceland,
the pathetic colonies
of Greenland, and suddenly<\/p>\n
those fabulous raiders,
those lying in Orkney and Dublin
measured against
their long swords rusting,<\/p>\n
those in the solid
belly of stone ships,
those hacked and glinting
in the gravel of thawed streams<\/p>\n
were ocean-deafened voices
warning me, lifted again
in violence and epiphany.
The longship\u2019s swimming tongue<\/p>\n
was buoyant with hindsight\u2014
it said Thor\u2019s hammer swung
to geography and trade,
thick-witted couplings and revenges,<\/p>\n
the hatreds and behind-backs
of the althing, lies and women,
exhaustions nominated peace,
memory incubating the spilled blood.<\/p>\n
It said, \u2018Lie down
in the word-hoard, burrow
the coil and gleam
of your furrowed brain.<\/p>\n
Compose in darkness.
Expect aurora borealis
in the long foray
but no cascade of light.<\/p>\n
Keep your eye clear
as the bleb of the icicle,
trust the feel of what nubbed treasure
your hands have known.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I returned to a long strand,the hammered curve of a bay, and found only the secularpowers of the Atlantic thundering. I faced the unmagicalinvitations of Iceland,the pathetic coloniesof Greenland, and suddenly those fabulous raiders,those lying in Orkney and Dublin measured againsttheir long swords rusting, those in the solidbelly of stone ships,those hacked and glintingin the gravel of […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poems","category-4-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1729"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1733,"href":"https:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1729\/revisions\/1733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}