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Five poems from “Friends with Everyone” by Gunnar Wærness (translated from the Norwegian by Gabriel Gudding)
Artwork by Gunnar Wærness
32. (such a friend to everyone / march 23 2015)
the shadow of the homeland
is a sea that follows us in our journey
it waits for us beside the rivers
that resemble blue intestines spilling out of the folds
of the map we stolenow i conjure from this tangle
of viscera and bowels
this carcass we once called the world we chased it with swords
first in boats then in books and at last with this
one bare hand that burns here on your thigh goddess
which you now ignore as you answer saying if you want to fuck
comrade you have to stop calling me mommathese are not my words that are crawling down the edge
of the map of the world drawn with crushed cochineal
soot and blood on vellum here where the seas have grown small
and the countries have disappeared while the rivers have risen
and the coasts have swollen like hearts and lungs and livers
all leading straight to the campsite we came from
which we modestly called the centerbut you understand the map we stole
is read best by those who made it
i held it upside down
and used the ocean as a lens
and saw other people out there conjuring
their own songs their own booksthe past is like the future out there
as water is like water i used to think
that not everyone
can write their own histories
and i sang for the people in campsmoke
and griddle grease for food and shelterbut here they’ve gone and done it
written their own history
with blood and gunpowder
cock and pussy here and now then
the people are a lion’s den i sangwhich other people enter from which few return
and everyone we run across becomes us becomes uswhat kind of fucking song is that the people ask
i reply it’s not a song it’s a vision
and you’re not supposed to sing along
you should just learn it by heart
and live accordinglyand they painted me with hot tar
and rolled me in feathers you who are such
a friend with everyone
you can’t live with us walt fucking whitmanso the story began
by counting all the others
who were chased from their fieldsthere were hardly seventy souls
on the heels of one they called the prophet
four lifetimes later they were six hundred thousandand the first to call themselves a people
a bowlshaped word that can be sailed like a boat
and shut like a casketand opened like a book
to dwell there means to be
not only many
but exactly how many