ys

I have been to New Orleans only once, and it was a long time ago. I remember abundant bougainvillea, wrought-iron railings, cannon, narrow cobblestone streets with gutters running down the middle, chicory coffee and the hot, sweet doughnuts at Cafe du Monde. In fact I have thought of those narrow streets and gutter in the middle every time I have walked down Bankastræti (often to Kaffi París, in search of kaffi og kleinur) where a similar gutter cuts the pavement.

That the key to my memory of that southern city should have been drainage strikes me as sadly appropriate today. And it is not Reykjavík or Paris or the original Orleans that comes to mind, but Ys (or Is). There is a poem; here is its first verse:

In the weird old days of the long agone
Rose a city by the sea;
But the fishermen woke, one startled dawn,
On the coast of Brittany,
To hear the white waves on the shingle hiss,
And roll out over the city of Is,
And play with its sad débris.