Norwegian
I knew his name fine, but couldn’t recall it.
He was Norway’s answer to Robert Burns, a countryman
among the sophisticates, and their first Modernist.
Do you not know who I mean? I have no books here
to check it up, but gave a lecture on him once:
Non-Anglophone Modernist Writing.
Not Ane Gaborg, though he did translate the Odyssey
into Nynorsk, who was mainly a novelist. Was it Obstfelder
or Olaf Bull? It might have been him. Overlapped the Victorians.
You should know. I should know. No matter -
What was astonishing in the dream was
I could recite whole stanzas of his poetry off by heart.
Lines, images flew from my tongue. I remembered it all,
astonishing even myself as I slept.
from Dreams and Other Nightmares: New and Uncollected Poems 1954-2009
