Four Poems

Valkyrie

Swans settle down to sleep among the cabbages,
                                        wings touching like the paper dolls
                                                                she strings across her door.

She watches from the window,
                                        thinks of all the words she knows for dark.
                                                                Tonight, she goes to them –
they croak to each other, their bright beaks,
                                        the bow curves of their necks.

                                        She looks back to her house
                                                                  and her arms feather in the cold.



Hervör and Völund
 
I held the birds of myself together
for seven years.
When I left with his ring,
he made seven hundred

to tempt me back.
Offered earrings like green eyes,
...