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<h1 style="color: #ffffff !important;">Dimmuborgir</h1>
<p class="summary">[Originally Published in Issue 2] </p>
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<p class="byline">Kylie Bergfalk </p>
<p><em><span style="font-family: monospace;">Dimmuborgir, or “dark cities,” is a lava field ne<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mývatn">a</a>r Lake
Mývatn in northeast Iceland. In Icelandic folklore it is said to be the
gateway to hell. This poem was inspired by a visit to Dimmuborgir in
October 2013.</span></em></p><p><span style="font-family: Georgia;">Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here”<br>This must be the place.<br>This frozen inferno, this eerie lava landscape <br>struck but untouched by the rays of the sun <br>“Here there be dragons!” the maps proclaimed<br>in the Saga days when Hverfell still breathed fire <br>Trolls’ holes abound and bleak castles rise through low shrubs <br>a dark city’s empty urban sprawl</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Georgia;">We wander from the path <br>finding footholds in lava pillars <br>cresting cold chimneys <br>and peering through ancient keyholes <br>trying to go up where the only way is down <br>on the solid shadows of molten lava <br>the corporeal portals of baptised fire <br>We delay but do not avert the inevitable; <br>Hell is any experience on an endless loop</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Georgia;">Has Dimmuborgir, born in the violent breath of the volcano, been tamed? <br>Trail maps usher tourists through this circle of hell <br>back to the beginning where a souvenir shop stands guard <br>and tour buses traverse the asphalt Acheron <br>Where are they now? The trolls, the faeries, the otherworld, <br>subject to the superimposition of pedestrian human meaning: <br>a cavernous formation deemed Kirkjan - “the church” - <br>is marked on the map, an unholy hike <br>where fiery flakes once fell on barren sand</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Georgia;">In the distance the face of a man <br>upturned beneath the brim of his hat <br>is cast in the rocks, Uncommitted, <br>damned to indifference <br>hanging in the balance between this world and the next <br>bound beneath the freedom of the sky. <br>I, with my salvation and steady pulse, <br>delivered from evil <br>shiver with guilt and gratitude <br>that my heart beats life into my limbs <br>and my feet will carry me beyond Dimmuborgir <br>out of the catacombs <br>past the cooled and crystallized gates of hell</span></p>
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