POISONING 2 Poem by Nils Christian Moe-Repstad

A trace of water runs over the window
like a repetition of how
the world is reborn through religion

it brings to mind birds

they fly white, settle in the creeping vines
that cover the garden-facing side of the concrete house
and could never have been found in a novel

‘in poetry birds are white and make the world
in a waving movement'

lilacs, blooming fields, the breeze
the song is not the same in winter
when white sheets dry in the sun and birds turn green

as the olive branch that stopped
Noah's drinking

the seventeenth day of the seventh month
the arc came to rest upon the Ararat mountains

the world is new, Noah is new
and doesn't think about the fevers, the cramps
the nausea that comes with sudden withdrawal

‘in prose birds are green and make the world
when wine flows'

when the waters recede
Noah's fever reaches 102
and because he's been drunk
and lived so closely with the animals
there's been a mutation:

Noah is a virus
3-5 days and all of the humans in the arc
have a temperature of 102

and the ambient temperature has risen 4 degrees

2014: an archeological expedition
does geophysical research in the Ararat mountains
and discovers an outline of a boat-shape in the bed
of the old testament's third river Hiddekel

‘we think we've found the arc and several related artifacts
among them, numbers of amphorae that once contained wine'

10-12 days later the archeologists'
temperatures rise
15-20 days and the air temperature
over the Ararat plain rises

in a partially sealed amphora
they find living spores and viruses

and the biologists and the virologists say: ‘nature and
the human body are now an extracellular phenomenon'

it is the lysogenic cycle

the trace of water over my window
might be Strandgaten's largest waterfall

the creeping plants will spread
whole facades disappear

the water is absorbed in microscopic bubbles of air
in concrete and blows up houses from the inside

like a patient implosion

philosophers, shamans, mathematicians, virologists
theologists, geologists, astronomers, physicists
ethnologists, archeologists, engineers, physicians
ecologists, meteorologists, and technologists:

‘the world is an other world
the body an other body'

the day goes slowly toward darkness, but
lights are shining from bedrooms into the backyard
people are slack with fever
but aware of their former ignorance of nature

still the seasons change
the white birds, the green birds

the human body's fever is constant