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On Tuesday, while examining the wreckage from the bomb, my friends and I also went out to the cemetery behind St. Olavs Domkirke to visit the graves of some of Norway's most favorite artists and people. One person buried there is Henrik Wergeland, whom I have become quite fond of. My favorite poem of his was written on his deathbed when he was dying of TB, and in it he cries for spring, one of the prevailing characters in his poem, to save him. I find the opening line so beautiful:

"O springtime, springtime, save me!
No one has loved you more tenderly than I."

So... without further ado, I wrote this poem to him in response to his fear of death and fear of oblivion.

Moral: we are all immortalized, even if we never live to see it.


Mortality is not well-behaved, too
Decided on rejecting the call,
Bitter that life enslaved you.

You knew you would succumb one
Day. Your fear depraved you.

You knew you would be merely
Part of the frost, part of the fall.

Yet your springtime has saved you.
How could she ever betray someone
Who loved her so sincerely?

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre