about the doves’ way
of living my life
as a natural result
of today since it’s raining
and as always in rain
they softly alight
on the window ledge
so close to the white
piece of paper that they
can easily see if
I’m writing of doves or of rain
it can feel wrong
that it never is doves
themselves impassively
writing of doves
of the rain perhaps
or the pane that they just
with a round little eye
see me so blurrily through
they don’t realise
that especially their flight
and their wings are connected
with gentleness, peace
practically impossible
to mention doves as doves
for instance in a poem
or to mention doves in rain
as the drenched and dishevelled
doves in rain that they are
today since it’s raining
it was actually first
at Berlevågs harbour
where the gulls rage
in the cold in June
that the absence of doves
of their arbitrary
clucking and crooning
struck me with something
that was not wonder
but quite ordinary
everyday openness
almost a reverence
as if the world held
a magnificent crystalline sphere
of minuscule steps
on wine-red feet
an ever-enamoured
complex tracking-down
of food and desire
in the caverns of day
from second to second
to circumvent death
and communicate presence
it struck me that poems
about doves about rain
must start in an egg
in a dizzying drop
must start out with down
with a gathering of drops
with feather on feather
a searched-out design
with greyish and brownish
and whitish and bluish
immaculate colours
with strata of water in air
with a heart somewhere
with delicate lungs
like bracken of oxygen
with the clouds’ web
with absence and at
the same time with a thirst
for human happiness
with all the possible
words made impossible
meaningless so that
the rain can rain down
and the doves can alight
the white paper that I
can easily see if they’re
writing of me or of you
of the rain perhaps
or the peace that they just
with a round little eye
see us so blurrily through
morning June 26th