This is a collection of poetry in translation, written over a number of years and occasionally published on blogs, list-servs, & misc. other locations. No rights reserved.
A film should stand on its own. It’s absurd if a film-maker needs to say what a film means in words. The world in the film is a created one, and people sometimes love going into that world. For them that world is real. And if people find out certain things about how something was done, or how this means this or that means that, the next time they see the film, these thing enter into the experience. And then the film becomes different. I think it’s so precious and important to maintain that world and not say certain things that could break the experience. You don’t need anything outside of the work. There have been a lot of great books written, and the authors are long since dead, and you can’t dig them up. But you’ve got that book, and a book can make you dream and make you think about things. David Lynch, “Interpretation,” in Catching the Big Fish.
When you look up at a tall mountain
When you look up at a tall mountainThe dragon rises, lifting its tail.And it rests with its tail lying downWhen you look into a hillyLandscape with lakes.Tall mountains kill the view,Like civil servants.It is better when the dragonTwists along the river,Appearing in the background.It is a thousand year old artTo regard rocks as witnessesTo decay and as speakersOf inner spaceThrough a mass of wrinkles and holes.Painting wind through trees and drizzleIs like poking your finger into a rock.From Øyvind Berg, Blindedikt [Blind Poems], 2010.
A big bag of shit thinks
A big bag of shit thinks:I would be worth much less If I wasn't so full of shit. If I wasn't a piece of shit I would merely be a bag of wind. And a dirtbag like me Have to be reasonably nice. Tie the bag up, smile blissfully. All leaks are a threat. From Øyvind Berg, Blindedikt [Blind Poems], 2010.
Against the rising sun
An elven land of peaks and moors, Arising from the sea,Is resting in an evening fair: A bluest border free.I often saw it vapor veiled Behind a foggy mist:A secretive and holy house Remote and out of reach.The peaked and pretty row asleep, Lies boundless in its dreams,Then for a moment set alight A burning fire gleams.The evening comes with burning blood In bog with bluest hail.It burns with glimmering and glows – A long-lost fairy-tale.Glaziers burn; they shake and shine In visions richly made.The air alight with glow of wine, Silver, and with jade!And yet the bleak and burning blaze Will die with fading light,And once again the elven land Lies bathed in the night.On tired tracks I often longed To know that distant scene.And yet its true it only shows When everything’s been seen.From Arne Garborg, Haugtussa, 1895.
Fängelse
Pojken dricker mjölkoch somnar trygg i sin cell,en moder av sten.
Prison
The boy’s drinking milk,sleeping safely in his cell,mother made of stone
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En pinande blåstdrar genom huset i natt -demonernas namn.
A freezing wind ispassing through our house to-night;the name of demons
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Svarta vykort
IAlmanackan fullskriven, framtid okänd.Kabeln nynnar folkvisan utan hemland.Snöfall i det blystilla havet. Skuggorbrottas på kajen.IIMitt i livet händer det att döden kommeroch tar mått på människan. Det besöketglöms och livet fortsätter. Men kostymensys i det tysta.
Black postcards
IA calendar fully booked. A future uncertain.The wire is humming quietly on a folk songwithout homeland. Snow falls on an ocean ofled. Shadows wrestle on the dock.IISometimes death arrives in the middle of lifeto measure man. It is a visit that is soonforgotten; life goes on. Oursuit is sewn in silence.
From Tomas Tranströmer, Sorgegondolen [The Grief Gondola], 1996.
Along the river
Conversing with contemporaries I saw heard behind their faces a flood running, pulling the willing and unwilling into itself.The creature with cemented eyes who wants to be hurled current-wise into the waterfall throws himself forward, without a shiver, in a furious hunger for simplicity.There is a pull from the increasingly rough waters,such as at the point where the river narrows and turns into a waterfall – the place where I rested from a journey through dry woodsone night in June: the transistor gives us the latest news from the emergency session: Kosygin, Eban.1A few thoughts pierce in despair.A few people are missing from the city.Floods of water hurl out from under the suspension bridgeand past us. Here comes the timber! Some treessteer like torpedoes straight forward. Others turn crosswise: stubbornly, helplessly revolving into nowhere,and then there are some who run their noses against the riverbanks, steering towards the rocks and clusters of wood, getting stuck to pile up as folded handsimmovable in the thunder.These things I saw heard from the suspension bridgewith some boys in a cloud of mosquitoes. Their bikes were buried in greenery – only their horns peered out.From Tomas Tranströmer, Mörkerseende [Seeing in the Dark], 1970.
1 On June 20, 1967 Prime Minister of the then Soviet Union, Aleksei N. Kosygin, appeared at a United Nations emergency meeting on Middle East issues after the Arab-Israeli war of that year. Following Kosygin’s talk, Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Abba Eban, spoke in defense of his country’s actions against Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.
President Lyndon B. Johnson arrives for church services in Honolulu, February 6, 1966, during Vietnam negotiations. National Archives photo.
Concerning the war in Vietnam
Behind the TV the lightchanged from the windows.Darkness turned intogrey and the trees appeared to beblack in the clear grey lightof the recent snow. In the morningeverything was buried in snow. Presently I goout to sweep up from the storm.I hear on the radio that the USA havereleased a white paperon the war in VIET NAMwhere North Vietnam is accusedof aggression. Last night as wewatched a film on TV made from theViet Cong side we heardthe slow flapping of helicopter machinesfrom the ground, from the side of those who werefired at. A few weeks agoa different film showed aninterview with Americanchopper pilots on CBS.One of them described how he ejaculatedwhen he finally got a hit ona “VC:” the rockets hurledhim nine feet. It willsurely snow more todaymy neighbour says. He isdressed in black, on his way to work where heembalms corpses and works as anight nurse at amental institution. The area where Ilive – Lundand surrounds – is turning into an ever whiterpaper, the sun appears to throw itsburning cold rays onto our vast pages.The dead are numbers that sleep, spinlike crystals, in the wind of the fields. So far anestimated two million people have died in VIET NAM.Here hardly anyone dies for any otherreason than the mostpersonal. The Swedisheconomy kills very few people, at leastin this country. No-one goesto war in our country to safe-guard theirinterests. No-oneburns us with napalmfor the sake of a feudal freedom.In the thirteenth- and fourteenth-centuriesthere wasn’t any napalm.Here the sun rises towards midday.It is almost March 1965.Every day more people are killed in America’sdisgusting war.The snow flakes in President Johnson’s photographat the time of the latest bombingsof North Vietnam – he steppedin or out of a car – fall ever more densely across thewhite pages.More dead, morejustifications,until everything is buried in the snowof a night that finallyalters its light outside thewindows.Göran Sonnevi, “Om kriget i Vietnam” (first published in BLM 1965: 3), reprinted in ingrepp – modeller [incisions – models], 1965.
Two angels met us in the doorway
blind austerityand blind satisfactionbut now they fly back toheavento collect dreamsfor our sleep
It is cramped under the arch of heaven
so I must stoop under the clouds –I had to escapebut no furtherthan to beneath a woman’s hairsince there it was, the windthat blended it all together
eg har mørke fjell
og brytande bølgjeri sjela, og ein stormbråkar viltigjennom den svarte eldeni tungsinnet
Dark mountains
and breaking wavesoccupy my soul, and a savagetempest criesthrough a heavy mind’sblack fire
From Jon Fosse, Poesiar [Lyrics], 2016.
Always fragment * Recycling
Truth be toldI don’t have timeTo finishThis poemWho on earth takes the timeTo write poetry?In half an hourI might have to leaveAnd finishHere.[...] 20 years agoI stood at the top ofThe World Trade CenterWatching endlessNew York grow beyondTemptation... JumpThe angels will carry YouIn their hands...Jump... You have a small fantasy grey as Slate... JumpYou might learn to fly...On the wings of poetryAnd rise towards “humanity’s happiness”... Take meIn your arms, jump, America sang. I only came to my sensesIn the basementOf this SkyscraperAfter having eaten a large pink andWhite portion of fromage– like shaving foam –I ate a sandwich– of cardboard and batt –And flushed it down with dishwater coffee– tasting like tea –And smiled, sweetly,To KaźmierzAnd sourly to myself.[...]“Tadeusz! Look up, goddammit!”I closed my eyesI dreamed of itself behind me,Unbelievably beautiful Manhattan, With a small church in the centre– St. Patrick’s Cathedral –Like a bird’s child in a nestOf scrapers and skiesP.S. Not much time Passed before the world againTurned wide (this rhyme presses like Gall) Come on, finish it, The poem asks...So 17 years have passed And some “fundamentalist” Taken into America’s bosomExercised his “right to freedomAnd happiness” by blowing upThe World Trade Center. Perhaps he didn’t like the coffee, Thinking (quietly) that heIn the name of a just godWould blow thisSkyscraper To heaven alongWith thousands of People. He is (surely) of“Deep faith” And not sceptical, Some rational atheist. Here I notice that Excessive eagerness is about to make meDestroy the delicate fabric of poetryAnd the construction of this poem, So I finish here and make a full stop. (Quandoque bonus...)December 1975 – July 1995From Tadeusz Różewicz, “Zawsze fragment * Recykling” (1998) reprinted in Grey Areas (2017).
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She cannot see.But there are thoseWho are lacking eyesCompletely.Others are bornWithout head.And then there are othersWho are never born. OnlyThought.TheyHave the world’sSmallest eyes.From Tor Ulven, A Book of Records, reprinted in Collected Poems, 2000.
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Withering, swollen old notebooks in yellow ochre binding. Filled with unreadable notes and drafts. Woven into nets of deletions. Names and addresses of persons who have become as unknown as they once were. Times and places without a year. Pages where the writing is washed away and all that remains is the blueish murk. Errands long completed or defaulted. And those things that are simply gone. Whole or half pages torn out. Traces of ballpoint, ink, marker, red chalk. Even our individual past becomes incomprehensible by itself.From Tor Ulven, Søppelsolen [Garbage Sun] – Memorabilia, 1989.
XVIII
The drops ofIced waterYou catch with your mouthFellThousands of years agoAnd ceasedDrippingThousands of years agoThey keep on fallingThe end ofThe seriesHas not yetReached you.From Tor Ulven, Det tålmodige [The Patience], 1987.
Exhibition I (Sketch For a Memorial)
The monument is a monument to its own forgetting. And it receives meaning only when there is no-one there to give it meaning. It is the rock you hold in your hand, the one you will never reach. Only the mirror always shows the right time. When the rock mirrors itself it is not out of vanity. The mirror reveals everything, the rock nothing. As rock and mirror is that which you most crave to know.From Tor Ulven, Stein og speil [Rock and Mirror], 1995.