í næturskógunum

Anyone can have nightmares. Borges had dream tigers. I picture them (and I blame Wm. Blake for this) glowing like ingots, stalking through the trees, the hot flicker of them lighting the undersides of dark leaves. Maybe they leave a ruddy path on the forest floor, crossing and crossing again until it gleams a dull red like in Kjarval's Skógarhöllin.


















Maybe the tigers have just passed.

(Sometimes I see horses like this, but only from far off. I am on a plain, and in the not-too-distant distance a smudge of forest is visible. It is only a line of green-black, but I know it is a deep forest. Under the edgemost canopy I can see the horses moving about. They are burning with high orange flame, but they are not consumed, and they do not singe the boughs above them.)