issue 35 > poetry > slavitt

In the manuscript division of the Biblioteca Centrală Universitară din Bucureşti, where Torkilk Mørch spent two years on a literary exchange fellowship, another of his poems has recently come to light.  It appears on the first page of a notebook that bears his name and the title, The Odes of Mørch. Presumably, he intended to add to this; it may well be that he did and that there are other Odes in another notebook of which there is no trace.  But this single surviving poem is interesting both in itself and also for what it tells us about work from his early years:

Kalaallit nunaat?  The damned, dumb Danes
couldn't pronounce it, or spell it, so they invented
a joke name, Greenland, because it wasn't.
Danmǫrk, is not much better: Were there Dani?
Was there someone named Dan?  And the ogonek,

that tail on the O that indicates nasalization.
What can we make of that?  The real names,
being known to only a few, are private.
The Danes think they own the island, but do they
if there is no Denmark, no Greenland?
                                                                        --David R. Slavitt, translator






Also by David R. Slavitt:

Two Hymns from the Rig Veda