"The Ghost of Wang Wei Looks at Skagafjord," Bill Holm

How the old Chinese poets would have admired Iceland!
Everthing appears one at a time, at great distance:
one ellow wildflower, one brown bird, one white horse,
one old ramshackle farm, looking small and far awa
with its polka-dot sheep and that ten-mile-long
black mountain lowering behind it. One farmer
the size of a matchstick walks out of his thimble barn
to his postage-stamp ha field while
over his head a river falls half a mile
off a cliff, a silver knitting needle
that disappears for the length of a finger.
Still you can see the farmer, even from this distance,
his tiny black boots, his brown coat, his blue hat,
his moustache, his slightly bloodshot eye
in which ou can just make out the reflection
of the Atlantic Ocean and the whole sky.

From Playing the Black Piano.

In a recent interview, Holm discusses publishing his first book of poems in more than a dozen years. He also spoke to Minnesota Public Radio, where you'll be able to hear him read from some of his work. Read his poem "The Icelandic Language." Holm wrote an essay about fellow Minnesotan Paul Wellstone shortly after the senator's accidental death in 2002; a poem honoring Wellstone's memory appears in Playing the Black Piano.