It is our fictions which make us real.
--Robert Kroetch
Is there no end
to what can be dug up
out of the mud of a riverbank,
no end
to what can be dug up
out of the floodplains of a language?
This is no more
than the sunken stump
of a watchtower on a city wall,
built long after any Isolde might have lived,
built over since a dozen times,
uncovered now in some new work--
a tower's old root in black water
behind a Dublin bus stop;
and the story is no more than a story.
Tristan drifted in here on the tide to be healed,
taken in because of his music,
and a long yarn spun on
of which they'd say--
Had not the lovers of whom this story tells
Endured sorrow for the sake of love
They would never have comforted so many.
