Didn’t; won’t; never ask anymore. Only spoke what I wanted:
to see Hamlet’s castle, and we were there. The sky
was light on the shoulders, as it is in the North, and I had
that blue certainty of a curse. Sergeant of distance,
the sea was the sea. Under its pressures, I thought
I could learn to love the water life. We walked the harbor
between the furled sails of the rich and a row
of Scandi buildings, all glass & perpendicularity & angels.
At the castle, I told the tourist group about Ophelia,
getting the flowers all wrong: I said rosemary’s for pelvic ennui;
bluebell for the ache of growing unreal in happy times. I didn’t ask for
him; never. At times I felt nothing at all,
at other times I was sick with my being, especially when I felt it melding.
The tourists were unimpressed with me, I with them.
The day was a time in the middle of making loves. This is what I learnt:
the feeling is trustworthy, like wooden floorboards, and its erasure is not.
The civilized Danish were indoors, and on the way back
we had gelato & accordion sounds, ghosts of the old port.
We walked together against the breeze, the street empty, nothing alive
underwater, and above 2 bluethroats making lovesounds
at each other, hello, sweet prince, hello.