a book named sirianna (for Gunnar Ulstad)

If a brick is a bullet then a bricklayer is a gun. The occupation of masonry differs from the occupation of a country. In that occupation, who gun-whips the bricklayer to build? Who aims the bricklayer to fire? A list of true facts:

there are nisse in these mountains & moss on the trees & a witch in the cave near the falls. As a boy, the bricklayer trekked the mountains on foot to ask her his fortune. Years later, the reindeer trampled berries the same season

the bricklayer sailed a ship to Minnesota; in Minnesota, the bricklayer sat at a typewriter & wrote the witch & bound her in hardcover; years later, his daughter held the book & said: this name. But, steer the boat backwards

& disembark, & it’s a different country. Waterfalls plunge down mountains into fjords & mouths shape different words. There is a wall where they once shot bodies belonging to names picked at random from the phone book. A team

of workers installed it, a team of prisoners dug a ditch, a murder of trolls wrestled in the mountains, & their occupation spread like wildfire. The witch told the bricklayer that he would live to see one-hundred years. The trolls

threw bricks at the crows flying overhead & the crows dropped hundred ton bombs into buildings the bricklayer built. The bricklayer trekked the   mountain, carried a thermos & cheese sandwiches, learned to lay bricks to care for his mother’s

youngest children. The bricklayer watched a prisoner gunned down & counted the bullet holes in his breast & years later remembered the number - 24 - in a new language. The trolls threw bricks at his head & he stole their chocolate & hid it

in a baby carriage. The trolls threw bricks at his head & told him to build them walls until no crows could find them. The trolls threw bricks at his workers until he saw their ribs out of their open skin. The trolls threw bricks at his babies, who   wailed.

He had guns to his neck & escaped only when the trolls started fighting. He hid in an elevator shaft with a typewriter & listened to crows on the radio, typing for help. He lost his hearing after an accident, lost his second language to a stroke,

lost his country to a war, left his country across an ocean. He carried a typewriter under his arm when the bricks rained down. He carried his child. The crows came when the sun rose. The trolls turned to stone, save the ones who didn’t.

The witch was right: one hundred years. His daughter said: this name for our baby.

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