Dorthe Nors - So Much for That Winter

Ran my fingertip along the edge of an iris, there where it curls inward, and then tugged up the zipper to the darkness (that’s allowed)

and bought white flowers for forty crowns.

Leafed through a book.

Watched one pigeon mount another on the chimney across the backyard, whereupon they went their respective ways along the ridge, balancing, totally matter-of-fact, while those of us over here in our segment know that nothing done is undone,

and that you have to take the consequence.

Agreed with myself never to wear a large hat, not even if I could use some class,

necessity, I thought, alone and stuck my foot out into the crosswalk on Roskildevej.

Walked down the long paths, past Vilhelm Kyhn

and home again

to the flat and my relation to myself. It’s always dicey,

you never know what awaits — an accident, a counterattack, another’s joy, or simply a thought, like when I sat in Chinatown and ate Peking duck and a revelation ran through my head at a point when I couldn’t listen: Pull yourself together, little girl, this sort of thing doesn’t happen in real life.

Chopped lettuce without cutting my finger

and decided that perhaps in time something good would happen. I do know that something will, I know it, like when you’re riding a train across Zealand in winter:

darkness darkness darkness darkness

and then suddenly a greenhouse crackling warm

in the middle of it all.

Woke slowly to the scent of wet sky.

Couldn’t think of a better way to start the day than to run around in the rain in a cemetery,

transcribed straight from a gravestone onto my moist palm the name of Anna Mess (and without reality we’d have lost the knack of fiction long ago).

Wondered why I’m always thinking about Refshale Island, and came to no conclusion,

but when I was young, we’d go to the air show once a year, and there was a place where kids were allowed to sit in the cockpit of a Draken, and the pilot lifted kid after kid up into the plane, first one boy and then another, and then he looked at me standing next to my mom. I suppose you’re going to try to fly too? But I wouldn’t, for what if the sky’s a far better place, I thought, clinging to my mom’s leg,

and seen from that perspective, love is what binds us to the earth.

Got caught in a thunderstorm by Valby PO.

Got caught in a hail shower under the awning of Café Sommerfuglen.

Got caught in a downpour at the library, in a side wind, in the constant dripping from the leaky gutters on Horsekildevej

and kept standing there anyway

until I walked through the graves and the magnolia trees home.

It’ll end well, this business. It’ll end well. It almost can’t help but. Denmark’s too tiny and there will always be doors I’ll find myself entering, and then we’ll stand there face to face, me and his rap sheet,

and we’ll be able to have a conversation, I thought,

it doesn’t make sense otherwise, I thought,

and seated myself in the graveyard among daisies and dandelions, and

it’s tough now, yes, right now it’s like driving a car in quicksand and suddenly realizing that the answer lies in the glove box, but you can’t reach the glove box, the glove box is two inches beyond your reach, your fingertips are tingling in the air but the glove box is out of reach and it’s in there, the wig, the magic potion, the pardon.

But it’ll end well, I thought, looking at the daisies.

My birthday was in fifteen days (nearly midlife), but it’ll end well, my life. With patience, industry, and goodwill, it’ll end well.

Biked into town and sat in a café near Kastellet.

Went when the shadows fell, round and round the fort, down to the water, as I usually do, through Nyhavn, as far as I could with arms swinging and the wind in my face, back to the Nyboder quarter, where I put on my bike helmet

(and it’ll all work out fine).

Ate ramen while I gazed down at the pigeons in the backyard, and I’m not stupid, and I’m not blind either, I thought,

so it’ll end well. I know that. It cannot anything but. It ends with my fingers stretching farther and farther and reaching all the way to the glove box without being able to reach it anyhow, but just when my nails are almost able to scratch at the laminated vinyl it opens anyway, the glove box, it opens of its own accord, it opens, for that is what it was made for and wants to do, and the light goes on and there it lies within:

the pardon.

Found a picture of the bench in Manhattan where I once sat eating my fruit and writing my postcards: Hey everybody, the world’s exactly like it is back home

(but it wasn’t).

My mouth hurt,

I was dizzy

and found a spot to lie in the sun:

boxwood, lilacs, some obelisks, and among the stiffened pigeons a magpie that looked at me with its impudent head aslant, and I’m sure it had its eye on my sandals.

Listened to the unoiled rollator wheels of the widows passing by.

Saw a heron soaring high above, round and round, and from a distance it resembled both poultry shears and one of those scavengers.

And have I ever been in the US? I asked myself

while I looked at my hands

and walked over to the elephants,

found a bench, dug out a little water and my apple and observed that elephants can be a bit unsteady on their feet too, not to say dizzy, and I am dizzy, as if there’s someone who’s calling me up without using a phone, and I don’t know where my receiver’s located, but when I close my eyes all sorts of things are streaming toward me.

Made a note to myself: there’s the reality that the others keep an eye on, and next to it is my own.

Took a detour home

and maybe it’s the heat, maybe it’s bloat or dehydration or some sort of blessing,

but in any case I’m dizzy.

Woke up dizzy.

Went sweatily around my flat beneath the drying attic, and water didn’t seem to help.

Tucked the papers in my bag,

seated myself somewhere near the Round Tower and its observatory,

seated myself with my minor infections invisible to the naked eye, suddenly caught in the sunshine, and I thought, So the time has come to learn to surrender.

Walked in the afternoon’s warmest hour down the main pedestrian drag and into a bookstore, to caress one maybe two books on the spine, because that’s why they stand there, they’re just like the rest of us, they want to be caressed and loved despite it all,

I thought, and saw there was a figure from TV, balancing with an ice cream cone outside the window on a miniature bike.

Embarked for home, scalding hot, like a little steel espresso pot,

lay down, thought, There’s nothing wrong with me, but if I lie still then the echo chamber might stop tormenting me,

but it didn’t.

Dozed, took a stroll as slowly as I could, elastic as a dromedary, languid and lazy amid nature’s example for emulation: Come on, just overdo it,

and everything so lovely that it trembles, and I stand, undeterrably dizzy in the midst of it all

and listen, now the blackbird’s singing

and soon the chestnut will blossom.

Opened my hand and grabbed hold: I’m not letting go.

Set the fan four inches from the table.

Went for a walk in Western Cemetery,

sat in the shade of a dawn redwood and gazed at the monument of some random industry baron, pyramidal and ivied and all, and I thought,