Journey from Iceland

[lnhammer]

—30 June 2002

Dear Mom,
                We’re back, as travelers tell their friends
And families when they—not close the door—
Feel they’ve returned to normal. Journey ends
Are funny that way—though what’s “normal” for,
Except to measure change? —and sight depends
On ground that’s not the figures. To ignore
    This fact of our psychology makes vain
    Attempts to tease the sacred from mundane.

We’re back is what I mean by all that, both
In body and in mental state. Two weeks was just
Enough of Iceland’s air to make us loath
To leave, but leave we did as tourists must.
The heat on our return has upped our sloth,
But now the dirty clothes are washed (or tossed)
    And all of our eleven-score of pictures
    Are labeled—so few, following friends’ strictures.

They filled two albums, I might add, a stock
Of canned and now selected memories—
Already, sights unshot are, to my shock,
Becoming scenes I can’t recall with ease,
And even parts, like colors of the rocks,
Not captured quite as well as one might please
    Are slowly warping under weight to how
    The photos claim they were—and still are now.

This lie is why I’m not a picture taker.
They’re taken as reminders, or should be,
But I believe the end result is faker
Than what I can condense in memory
With words, both writ and told—But how opaquer
Could my report be? —you can barely see
    My subject; lately all my conversation
    Increasingly becomes pure divagation.

Some facts, then—or at least a few impressions
I formed by skimming. Icelanders aren’t closed—
Everyone was helpful with our questions—
Yet not outgoing. They’re private, calm, composed.
While summer’s not the season for depression,
I got the sense that winter dark imposed
    A burden, but it’s something you don’t fuss
    About—you cope with darkness, not discuss.

Life’s on the edge, lived in the north Atlantic,
And summer’s short—you catch what you can clutch.
Disasters, whether arctic or volcanic,
Are part of everyday up there; as such,
They’re better dealt with calmly, not with panic.
“Things happen—and you deal with it” is much
    The attitude,* as one man said. Yet in
    All nature stories, Nature always wins.

In general, there’s the air that Iceland has
At last achieved a mild prosperity,
And uses this to make up for its past
Privation; infrastructure’s partially
Constructed—soon the Ring Road will (at last)
Be fully paved. Folks, talking, easily
    Regretted, with the world recessionary,
    All cultural support’s discretionary.

They house in concrete, painted or left bare:
Imported wood’s extravagant, unsightly.
The style is Functional. Their inside wares
Aren’t ordered from (at least, it isn’t likely)
IKEA, but they could have been—they share
That sensibility. The towns are brightly
    Colored: yellow, orange, blue, and red,
    Though sometimes someone went with green instead—

But green was everywhere, for summer had
Just started: lambs abounding through the fields,
Short horses scratching winter shag like mad,
Bright dandelions. At first, our search revealed
The lupines weren’t blooming, but the fad
For purple hills grew while we watched, and yields
    Of tourists rose, by ever-sunlight seeded,
    Till reservations by the end were needed.

Their history is very much a thing
They’re conscious of, including Vinland. Well,
That may have been a part of touristing
Since Sagaland is part of what they sell,
But once I turned around and found—ka-ching!—
The grave of Snorri Thorfinnsson, who sagas tell
    Us was the Vinland colony’s first-born.
    In such ways the times of daily life is torn.

As human past, so too geology:
The land’s basaltic, glacially tattooed
By U-shaped gouges plus moraine debris;
With nothing growing but at low altitude,
It shows its ground nature——. But I figure free
With your poetic patience, which is rude,
    So of the rest—the stonebound trolls,
    How few Americans we met, the tolls

That sun and time-shifts took,** graffiti lees,
The way Icelandic’s spoken,*** horses’ gaits,
The birds, what puffins taste like, how few trees
There are, a sorcery museum, the late
Volcanos, how children aren’t as sheltered—these
(Aside from footnotes scribbled there) must wait,
    As must fixed pictures, till we meet anon.
    I trust all’s well, and still remain,
                                                    your son.


* Only direst stress could produce the aggravated nurse’s lullaby:

        Fire and ice,
        Baby be nice
    And go to sleep real soon
        Or I will go
        Through ice and snow
    And drop you in the lagoon!

** Watch whirly tourists in the street
    And wonder whether they’re insane;
They’re not—they’re lost in Reykjavík
    And they just stumbled off the plane.

*** Icelandic words will sometimes burn
    Their endings, sometimes not;
So listen well and you can learn
    To correctly say Mývatn.

And too:

He woke up feeling peckish—now,
    To keep from looking loutish,
He must know in Icelandic how
    To order morgonmatur.


Trip report of our first Iceland trip. The date is of sending -- it was actually drafted during the three days before that, then polished a week later, except the footnotes which were written while in Iceland as stated. The second footnote was previously excerpted here as "Postcard from Iceland." The title is, of course, riffing Auden, as is the form.

---L.