King
Harold's Stones at Jelling
by Harold Rhenisch
of churches that are built like boats
and smell of salt, in this country town
we stumble into on the first day of winter
by the North Sea. The baby cries in the car;
wind spills through the weave of our sweaters;
we stamp our feet and don’t speak
a word in the white light of the nave
bound together with black rods of hammered iron —
the runes outside, the king whose name I bear,
the language of dragons, that I cannot read but trace
with fingers as waves break inside the sky
and splash over farms: cupped around a flame;
surrounding us. Spray drifts through beeches
rimming beet fields; a five minute walk
from the house is a journey into emptiness.
We stand at the end of the earth,
without axes or gods, reduced to the things
of the world — wood, stone, iron.
They are chill in our hands; we feel their weight
as we speak them with cold tongues
across the blindness that holds us grimly to the earth.
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