Dan Andersson: 'En spelmans jordafärd'

A FIDDLER’S FUNERAL

Ere a rosy dawn starts glowing over Himmelmora’s crest,

see, from Berga a poor corpse is being borne.

O’er the small flowers of the hillside mourners plod on two abreast

’neath the cool and leaden clouds of early dawn.

Heavy boots tread through ploughed plots with the roses’ sprinkled dots.

heavy heads bowed as in prayer are now in view.

From the wasteland’s inner dread glides a dreamer who is dead,

o’er a meadow that gleams green from all the dew.

He was queer and he was lonely, is what four black men explain,

and he frequently lacked shelter and lacked bread. –

See, a king, proclaim the roses and are trampled on again,

see a king as well as dreamer is now dead!

It’s a long way, say the bearers, many miles ahead still lie,

and as day grows hotter wearily we tread. –

Steps grow cautious, tongues speak softly, willows sing and sallows sigh,

it could well be that a flower is what is dead.

But as blackly rocks the coffin through the woods in springtime green

silence moves through farm plots woken by the dawn,

and the west wind stops a moment to make out with senses keen

who through roses took steps heavy and forlorn.

It is only Fiddler Olle, sings the spruce and sighs the pine

he has ceased to chase his years without a home. –

Strange, the wind replies, if I just like a hurricane could whine,

I would play the whole long way he now must roam!

Over yellow bogs and heather hard, dead bones now rock and sway,

rock and sway through the pale quiet of forestland.

But when over stones and berries coolness wafts at end of day,

heavy feet tramp on through Himmelmora’s sand.

Feet of four tired mourning men, tramping homeward now again,

heavy heads bowed as in prayer once more in view.

But deep in rifts so sore, are the roses torn to gore,

in a meadow that gleams green from all the dew.

He is gone now, say the four men, for his mother awful news,

she who in Torberga poorhouse now must dwell. –

Why do trampling heels abuse us, are we trodden on by shoes?

all the roses wail and show their wounds as well.

It is Death that has been dancing on through Himmelmora’s sand,

sigh the thistles at the clover meadow’s rim.

He has worn you down to dirt with his coarse shoes, just as planned,

when he danced and had the dreamer’s bones with him.

Over grass and drab grey houses night is swiftly swishing past,

pallid stars are twinkling like some gutted pyre.

From the west across the heath down to the tarn light moves at last,

and a song moves over water-lilied mire.

The raging storm sings black and white, round Härnaön the air,

foam and waves sing of the wasteland’s need and dread.

Over black and angry waters night strikes up the tune for prayer,

for a fiddler and a dreamer now is dead.

The Singing Danes

THE SINGING DANES

On top of our family piano when I was a boy were two books, one brown one blue, with identical titles – ‘Community Song Book’. They contained a wealth of songs, with classics like ‘My Bonnie lies over the Ocean’ and ‘Pollywolly Doodle’, but also some songs that were good poems set to music, such as ‘Drink to Me only with thine Eyes’ (Ben Jonson’s ‘Song to Celia’ [1616]) and ‘Down by the Salley Gardens’ (Yeats [1899]). They seemed esoteric in a way, the sort of song to be sung by a soloist with piano accompaniment, rather than songs for everyone to join in – not the sort of thing people spontaneously sang at social gatherings. And I cannot recall any family occasion where that was the case.

Danes are different. They love to sing together on festive occasions. So the obvious question is: Why do Danes like to sing together? Part of the answer is that the Danes are a clannish people, with a multitude of subclans. Danes will form clubs and associations whenever given the slightest chance. Danes love to meet in different constellations and feel part of something. Family celebrations, birthday parties and wedding anniversaries, though, are where Danes perhaps sing most. Guests come with their own lyrics to well-known tunes, telling stories and anecdotes about those being celebrated, copies are handed round and everyone joins in. But this is only one type of song. For Danes also sing many of their famous poems, since set to music, on such occasions. Poetry and community singing go together in Denmark. But has this always been so?

Until the 19th century, most of the poetic texts were hymns and were sung in church or family. But during the 19th century a tradition for community singing gradually developed that has lasted to the present day.

Some of the reasons are historical. Denmark has changed shape considerably over the years, but the period from 1773 to 1921 is particularly interesting in explaining the Danes’ deep interest in their identity. What makes a Dane? What does it mean to be Danish?

From the Reformation to the end of the Napoleonic Wars (1536-1814) Denmark ruled Norway, along with its former possessions of Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands. Until the mid-17th century, it also owned parts of southern and western Sweden. When Norway was handed over to Sweden in 1815, in exchange for land in Pomerania and Rügen, its kingdom to the south included all of Schleswig-Holstein, i.e. Denmark stretched down past Kiel and nearly included Hamburg and Lübeck. It held both duchies until 1864, when they were lost to Germany. This situation lasted until after the Second World War, when a referendum was held and northern Schleswig voted to return to Denmark. It is now called Sønderjylland.

Why mention all this? Because Schleswig-Holstein was an area with two languages, two cultures. To the north, Danish speakers were in the majority; to the south, German speakers. Even today you find German schools in Sønderjylland and Danish schools in Südschleswig. But in the first part of the 19th century, after the education act of 1814, which had been influenced by the ideals of the Enlightenment, children were to taught to read – and to read poetic texts. During that period there was also more focus on the concept of the fatherland and an upsurge of National Romanticism.

By far the most important hymn and song writer of the 19th century in Denmark was the vicar, theologian, thinker, writer and poet N.F.S. Grundtvig (1783-1872), a man of innovative and sometimes polemical views who was sentenced to life-censorship in 1825, but granted a royal reprieve by the absolutist king Christian VIII in 1837. By then, people in northern Schleswig were beginning to call for a free constitution. In 1840, the king made Danish the official legal language in the areas where it was used in churches and schools and also made it an official spoken language. This led in 1843 to public meetings being held at a hill, Skamlingsbanken, which lies on the border with Schleswig. Grundtvig was an active supporter of the mother tongue, since all Danes should use their own language and, like birds, ‘sing with their own beak’, as he put it. For the second meeting he wrote a song, a community song for all to sing. And this song is the first one we are going to look at, since, set to music by Erik Grip in 1983 and included on an LP (in those days) devoted to Grundtvig songs, it has become one of the best-loved community songs Danes have, now included in the Folk High School Song Book – to which I will return in a moment. What present-day singers may not realise, for only six of the eight verses are normally sung, is that this song is an impassioned plea for the Danish king to allow all Danes to learn and use their language, and thereby find their true identity as thinking human beings and not mere subjects who blindly obey their king. He has to tread warily in the song, for the king is an absolute ruler until 1849, when the Danes get their constitution.

VELKOMMEN I DEN GRØNNE LUND

(YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PqAupaDWo0)

Thrice welcome to the leafy grove (1843) [HSSB 155]

Thrice welcome to the leafy grove,

where birds are sweetly singing!

Let too the Danish tongue now prove

its song can set things ringing.

For all in all we’re well off here,

like those of old who bore us

God willing, may the day be near

when more still lies before us.

Our king, a trusty friend is he,

his words like gold we treasure:

‘Come hither, good Danes, tell to me

where you’ve been served short measure!’

If we could all our mouths command

to more besides just eating,

Each second child in Denmark’s land

would grasp what won’t need speaking.

Not much is needed joy to share 

and present lacks to banish,

a little though, both here and there,

that’s what is truly Danish.

On Skamling hill the other day

a little bird sang clearly,

and ’twould be shame to hide away

the thoughts that all felt dearly.

Proud lions adorn the Danish shield

bestrewn with hearts unshrinking,

since days of old they hold the field,

not miming apes unthinking.

Each bird its special song must find,

for life would without singing

be merely drudgery and grind.

So welcome, hear it ringing!

At precisely this period, the first Danish Folk High School came into being, followed by many more in the following half century. It was the realisation of Grundtvig’s dream of popular education, for he strongly believed that true democracy could only come if Danes were freed from an elitist education for the few and all, especially those in rural areas, were given a chance to become enlightened individuals. His poems and hymns, of which there are a vast number, have three main strands: the Dane as a thinking individual, the Dane as a Christian, the Dane as a proud member of the nation. This last strand is of course very much in evidence in songs written after the loss of much Danish territory in 1864 – a traumatic event for Denmark. This was summed up in 1872 by a Dane by the name of Holst: ‘Hvad udad tabes, skal indad vindes’ (What is outwardly lost must be inwardly won). In other words, the way to recover a Danish identity was to immerse oneself in Danish culture.

In 1894, the first Folk High School Song Book was published. Up to the latest edition, it had sold 2.4 million copies. The new edition (the 18th) has once more taken certain songs out and put new ones in. This book is so popular that copies are normally available for many social occasions and gatherings. It has the songs arranged according to themes, so Danes always know where to look when they want a song about, say, ‘Life’, or ‘Morning’.

The next song has music by Carl Nielsen, Denmark’s most famous composer. Nielsen set many poems to music, some of which have become much-loved community songs. One of the best-known is that of Jens Roadman, a propagandist poem, requested by the author of the newspaper Politiken and printed in it on 22 June 1905. The music for it was written by Carl Nielsen the following year.

Jens Roadman [HSSB 100]

Who’s sitting by the shelter

with hands where rags do cling,

with eye-patch made of leather

and shoes held on with string?

It’s no one but Jens Roadman

who must, shall he be fed,

transform with his own hammer

the hard stones into bread.

And should you wake one morning

as dawn begins to soar

and hear a hammer clanging

once more, once more, once more,

It’s no one but Jens Roadman

on old legs once so true

who sends wild sparks a-flying 

from stones now wet with dew.

And should you travel townwards

behind the farmer’s mares,

and pass beside an old man

eyes watering with tears –

It’s no one but Jens Roadman,

straw-clad round legs and knees,

who seeks in vain for shelter

so he won’t have to freeze.

And should you journey homewards

while showers and gales molest,

the evening star a-trembling

from cold in due southwest,

and hear the hammer singing

behind you close somewhere –

It’s no one but Jens Roadman 

who still is sitting there.

And so he smoothed for others

the road that’s hard to go,

but when it came to Christmas

his arm said to him ‘No.’

’Twas no one but Jens Roadman,

his hammer fell from sight,

they bore him o’er the heath on

a cold December night.

There stands within the churchyard

a board now half-decayed;

that skews obliquely sideways,

its paintwork faint and frayed.

It’s no one but Jens Roadman,

his life was full of stones,

but on his grave they gave him

not one to mark his bones.

One of the things that can be noticed here is praise of the common man, a theme also present in the last song I have chosen, but now with a self-ironic twist so typical of Danes, who like to insist there is nothing special about them but that even so they have a capacity to enjoy the simple things in life.

The last song has text and lyrics by one and the same man, Benny Andersen, who is one of the most popular poets in Denmark. He was born in 1929 and has been publishing collections of poems since 1960. One of his biggest hits was a slim book published in 1972 called ‘Svantes viser’ (Svante’s Songs), purportedly written by a semi-drunken Swedish cynic called Svante. The songs were recorded by Poul Dissing and the LP released the following year.

SVANTES LYKKELIGE DAG

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhrPgbIHVAQ&feature=related)

They were a huge success. And the song that has really become a classic, which is sung by young and old alike, is one where Svante, content for once, contemplates his naked wife Nina after her shower, consumes his breakfast and looks forward to his coffee, which is almost ready. The refrain is part of the common consciousness in Denmark: Livet er ikke det værste man har, Og om lidt er kaffen klar!

Svante’s happy day [HSSB 21]

See how the day’s begun!

Warm is the round red sun.

Nina is showering at ease.

I’m eating bread and cheese.

Life’s not the worst thing around so they say

and the coffee’s on its way.

Flowers start to flower once more.

Spiders run down the door.

Birds fly in flocks through the air

when there are birds to spare.

Joy’s not the worst thing around so they say

and the coffee’s on its way.

Green is the grass and wet.

None of the bees need fret.

Suck in the air till it’s spent.

Oh, get that bindweed scent!

Bliss’s not the worst thing around so they say

and the coffee’s on its way.

In wafts a shower-time song.

She’s really going strong.

Outside the sky is quite blue.

I can approve that too –

Joy’s not the worst thing around so they say

and the coffee’s on its way.

Now Nina comes right in,

naked, with moist warm skin,

kisses me fondly, still bare 

goes off to do her hair.

Life’s not the worst thing around so they say

and the coffee’s on its way.

Erik Knudsen: 'En hare'

A hare 

A hare runs over the lawn
I see it
because I’m staring at nothing.

I nattens dybe stille ro...

I skovens dybe, stille ro,

hvor sangerhære bo,

hvor sjælen lytted mangen gang

til fuglens glade sang,

der er idyllisk stille fred

i skovens ensomhed,

og hjertets længsler tie her,

hvor fred og hvile er.

Hør landsbyklokken lyder ned,

bebuder aftenfred,

småfuglen, før den går til blund,

end kvidrer lidt en stund.

I mosen kvækker højt en frø,

stærkt damper mark og sø,

nu klokken tier, - aftnens fred

sig stille sænker ned.

I forest depths where quiet reigns

in songbirds’ prized domains,

where troubled soul could listen long

to joyous warbling song,

there is idyllic peacefulness

within the forest’s loneliness

and all heart’s longings quite subside

where rest and peace reside.

Hear how the village bell rings clear,

announcing evening’s near,

small birds, before they go to sleep

give one last final cheep.

A frog from bogland croaks out loud,

field, lake wear steamy shroud,

and evening peace, when bell’s chime ends,

now tranquilly descends.

Man antog tidligere at teksten var skrevet af H. C. Andersen, men det er mere sandsynligt at den er forfattet af komponisten Fritz Andersen, som i 1864 udgav en samling sange til skolebrug. Heri findes sangen, men uden angivelse af forfatter. Melodien er en gammel folkemelodi, sandsynligvis fra Langeland.

Erik Knudsen: 'Fisk'

Fish

Strange fish from imagination’s freshwater:

Tiny à la fireflies, large grey

                      porous as pimpstone,

Yellow, spotted,

                      some violet with a prayer on their lips,

One brown and quivering like calf’s liver, another

Pink and transparent, its own x-ray photograph –

Yes, it’s exciting to drag for them

Completely alone in the forbidden forest,

Where one can calmly glide in one’s boat

And make friends with dragonflies

and opulent blond clouds –

See how they squirm in the net, the strange creatures!

Inedible – but I haven’t the heart to throw them out.

I’ve an old aquarium at home,

Model 1804 or thereabouts…

Ingemann: 'Tit er jeg glad'

Confessions

(Based on the Swedish).

La bienséance est la moindre de toutes les loix & la plus svivie. 

                                                                         Rochefoucauld.

I’m often glad, although I feel like weeping;

For no heart shares the joy in my sole keeping.

I’m often sorrowful, though laugh with glee,

So no one all my frightened tears may see.

I often love, although I feel like sighing;

For my heart needs be mute and hid from prying.

I’m often angry, though must wear a smile;

For those who anger are but fools that rile.

I often burn, yet in such heat I shiver;

The world’s embrace is like an ice-cold river,

I’m often cold, yet sweat stands on my brow;

For many tasks lack love it seems somehow.

I often speak, though would refrain from prating,

Where mindeless words for thought need not be waiting.

I’m often dumb, and would to ease my breast

Have thund’rous voice when it is most oppressed.

Oh! You alone who can my joy be sharing,

You at whose bosom I can weep uncaring,

Oh! dearest, if you knew me, loved me true,

I could be always as I am – with you.

Erik Knudsen: 'Schack Staffeldt'

Schack Staffeldt

You light candles in all the windows

So as not to see the grinning predators.

But the daughters of the night call you out, lure you 

with golden apples and shameless orchids.

Your shadow grows fantastically, skims

the Milky Way, swings across the moon’s torso.

Suddenly

An organ plays in soughing deciduous trees.

You listen in close to your naked heart

And hear an echo from memory’s mountain caves.

The stars laugh with delighted eyes.

One of them is you. But which?

A fever in the blood. A longing for home. – If only you could

be free of your dead weight! pull your thoughts up by the root!

Calmly in the distance

An objective mainland sways. – If only you dared

Leap out of your damned volcanic island!

Your breast is heavy with lava.

No delivery, no flight.

You are sore constricted between heaven and earth,

Groan under the weight of a thousand atmospheres.

The candles flicker behind the wet window-panes.

You have no tears, no reality.

The dream is your only element.

But you are alert and lucid.

Without a telescope

you find yourself:

An extinguished planet in a sea of fire.

Schack von Staffeldt (1769-1826). 'Staffeldt was not held in high regard in his own time but is acknowledged as one of the most important Romantic Danish poets by later generations' (Wikipedia).

Check the index for translations into English of poems by him. Here's one to start with.

Erik Knudsen: 'Horbelev'

Horbelev

When we buried my aunt

and stood in the graveyard in black clothes

I suddenly saw the land of the living:

The wood down there by the Baltic

blue in the shimmering heat

blue as when we ran along the shore

and built rafts out of planks and

jerry cans

and dived and saw the world from the inside

clear as glass, green with sun.

Erik Knudsen: 'Min Lundbye rus'

J. Th. Lundbye (1818-48). Danish painter, drawer and graphic artist

My Lundbye ecstasy

I was not myself, I was Lundbye,

sat securely on a child’s stool in mid-nature,

happily alone in the open landscape.

The low-lying plain, the sky’s oceans

were noted down and on the paper filled

as little as the shadow of a clover leaf.

And I gained eyes. Everything flew open like doors –

I drew away and wrote, I did not want

the dream to fly away. I was stubborn.

I held on tight. There I sat, twelve years old

with the world like a dog at my feet.

Ragnar Thoursie: 'Kråkorna skrattar' (The crows are laughing)

Contents

Prelude:

CROWS AROUND TEGNÉR

Chorus of crows’ and old men’s voices:

EARTHLY LAMENTATION

Motto from Esias Tegnér’s ‘Spleen’, 1825

I                    (To annihilation)

II                  (November)

III                (Hearing of prayer)

IV                (Death unavoidable)

V                  (Death’s kiss)

VI                (The crow and the old man)

VII               (The old man and the swallows)

VIII             (Downwards)

IX                (The final room)

X                  (The waiting)

XI                (Tired of life)

XII              (Wordless poem)

XIII            (Repairing tailor)

XIV             (Washing day at the old-man poet’s)

XV               (Poet at twilight)

XVI             (Madman’s guard)

XVII           (The devil’s mirror)

XVIII         (The harangue)

XIX             (Cancer’s secret)

XX               (The old man’s complaint)

XXI             (The mark)

XXII           (Alone)

XXIII         (On sight and care)

XXIV         (Cold)

XXV           (Understand first now)

XXVI         (Lamentation)

XXVII       (Blessed beverage)

Seductive voices

GODDESSES AND OTHER INDECENCIES

The view of the old man

The young woman

‘Die Frau und der Greis’

Love’s last act

Among the rejected

Eddies in Norrström

Poised for flight

Poor old man

Dies advesperascit

SIGNS OF INSIGHT

Motto taken from the title

of a lecture by Krister Stendahl

published in his book ‘Opinions’, 1986

A new earth

Stretch out your hand

The word of the Bible

The prayer

Eternal landscape

Ancient Chinese motif

The grove of wisdom

The greatness of the perishable

The poet and the mirror

Journey in the memory

Aphrodite

The old man and Time

Poem with needle and thread

The while with Jesus

The Hyacinth and the Eternal

The lion’s voice

The graphic artist

The thankless old man

The blind crow

Ragnar Thoursie

The crows are laughing

Late poems

Prelude:

Crows around Tegnér

Crows in sleet;

black limes against the white sky of the episcopal

residence. The scavengers flock together, laugh

at Death, the Right Reverend,

my torment. And under the Cathedral’s double spire – a

skyward claw – the scrawny city huddles.

In broad daylight, shamelessly to any eye-

witness, he comes in the litter, ‘The Old Man on the Hill’;

crows escort him – they start their

day’s work. Soon as witnesses they sit wide-eyed in a row on a roof-edge

resemble poorly-paid clergymen; black

cloaks folded on their backs and stained waistcoats.

Along with co-opted house-sparrows: peck at horse droppings

on Main Street.

                                           All this while Doctor Selldén’s wife lifts her chemise

                                                                                                   for the great man.

They believe they have seen what ought not to be seen.

They believe they have heard what ought not to be heard.

They believe something has happened anew that ought not to happen.

They caw indignantly their message

with cracked voices into the late-winter day.

. . .

What is the more shameless? To caw

like crows in Växjö – every morning the gossip

becomes World History. Or to make love

to Emili and subsequently mount a pulpit.

What does the early-bird crow care about the night’s

torment. What do those that yawn and gossip,

that flutter their black wings at the sky in the daytime

matter to you when you alone

                                                         are to meet our Lord and Maker.

Chorus

of crow and old men’s voices

Earthly lamentation

‘Tell me, you watchman, how the night progresses!

Is it unceasing, will it never end?

The moon, half-eaten, through the sky’s still presses,

The tearful stars still through the heavens wend.

My pulse beats fast as in my youth’s successes,

Hours of affliction though it cannot mend.’

I

Today myriads of vermin, small black

bugs: on my profusely flowering Hibiscus.

And in my life they also gush forth – unexpectedly

myriads of black memory-bugs: fierce small

nips, poisonous words, mortal stings, hordes of secret signs

of hatred... Time to put an end to this, my Hibiscus!

II

Darkness slowly descends

over my garden. Soon only black

contours visible: the juniper on its lonely

watch in the snow, and the impenetrable hedge.

Night grows more compact around my life, what is past.

Only the longing for You lights with a flickering flame.

III

Else I’d expected on life’s last slope.

Carnations, not hatred’s envelope.

Clothes black as night. Faces veils are concealing.

Guests sadly gliding, with shoes that are gleaming.

Then she thanks God, who has answered her prayer.

IV

Death unavoidable

is blocking my path.

With an evil grin,

the keen scythe

laid over his knee.

Doesn’t budge this time.

Wants to see me give way.

-------------

Don’t believe Death –

not mild, but scrawny.

No, He hacks

hungrily with the axe.

Gauges exactly

the depth of your torment.

-------------

Spruce forest snow-laden

mile upon mile.

Such is the path

up to the old one’s meeting.

V

Poor my preparation.

Woe, alas and dread in my soul.

It most resembles a rag in shreds.

No plucky resolve to stay silent

and suffer. No, a coward’s

moaning, when night tightly holds me.

       A kiss so cold, a claw-like toe.

       What use is welfare on

       a farewell journey. No son, no sister

       allays death’s pain,

       now numbing my heart.

VI

Dirty grey, ruffled by rain,

heavy with years, despised.

- Crow in the courtyard. Attempts a dignified walk:

teeters, totters, scouts (like a weather-vane);

laboriously takes off, a crash,

                                           to another corner of the yard.

. . .

Behind the curtain a pop-eyed old man.

Scratches his beard-stubble, his nails cracked,

nasty taste in his mouth: lonely

                                                                the final years.

VII

Close to the heavy front-door of my rented lodgings

       (that will be my last)

swallows have built their airy nest, briefly,

       in a ventilator eaten by rust.

Old man thinks every morning: - Ah, if only my soul

       could leave earthly life as lightly as those on the wing!

VIII

Sixteen stairs. Heavier each

time; hand on banister. Somewhere

memory fails. Seventh stair

and the old man’s forgotten:

Why did I set out? Thinks: count-

less rounds, up – and down.

Up to carry out,

down to recall. What.

Slowly life passes. Downwards.

IX

Four walls limit

my field of vision, the ceiling a lid:

a box, rented from co-op housing.

Wait and see – when the contract

the white one signed by the Lord

may expire and the box be nailed shut again...

like a coffin – it soon shall be closed, and reassured

I once more whisper through my evening prayer.

X

Precisely, almost scientifically

pedantically I keep the ledger of my

nonsensical life. In so doing

bring order into what it is meaning-

less. While waiting.

XI

Lion in cage.

Three paces, satiated with power.

And back. The broad nose

kisses the steel wall.

I likewise in my final

asylum: lap upon lap

my thoughts take

the last paces. In vain

searching for an exit.

XII

Old poet writes poems

                                           about death.

As if discovered first now

                                           where life is heading.

Astonished the eye blinks at the inexorable.

No longer a play on words – no

                                           a wordless while

when you conclude your last poem.

XIII

Old trousers as if new – before

when they were turned inside-out.

But the known, accustomed

and much-turned words: turn them

around and inside out. But no

more meaning came out of that!

XIV

Old-man poet much to do:

Mops up a drop, dirty behind.

Darns a stanza that’s got a hole.

- White as a sheet, I grassp my penn.

Oh, what laundrying it would need

were I to wash my past until

clean! Here all that’s to be done is

to darn and mend and wash one’s life’s

most noticeable stains.

XV

Seven lines, seldom more.

And yet too much.

So little his day’s work

and yet immense:

                      to find

                      the final

                                    words.

XVI

The deranged, demented, debilitated

deservedly guarded.

Arrogantly rattling heavy

key-bunches of prohibitions.

. . .

But no longer do the

keys fit his existence.

Seeks in vain to guard

over his own insanity.

XVII

Pointed nose, varicosed legs.

paunch heavy and ditto pouch.

Memory poor – for injusticies ever young.

Coquettish: wig awry and a wine-

red swearing to the black ulster.

Look in the mirror: Who are you like,

old man? Oh yes, the Evil One himself;

friendly smile he still bestows

on your world whose end near grows.

XVIII

Like an intractable old crone:

knows plenty, has learnt little.

shuts her dentured mouth up tight

except when it ought to stay silent.

Blue veins, red eye-slits,

strands of beard – and yet coquetting

with her conceit. Boasts

of her age, insists on respect

for her ailments. Sucks on her

lump of sugar. Such is

Humanity’s last madness: wrangles with death.

XIX

Grey-stony. Stock-still. Mute.

So does the old man seem: Seals off his mind

from the world. Broods on himself;

remembers. And all the while the cancer

grows in his flesh, incessantly: The only thing

that lives – works indefatigably towards death.

XX

Give up! All time’s no longer yours.

Your time is up! Always you

hope in vain. The Angel’s

revelation came to pass too late.

A grave prepared! From blackest soil grows

                                    worms’ yellowest rose.

XXI

Today – how far away

the present is for sure.

       How unreal

reality.

       How uncertain

the only certain thing.

-----------

All the temporary

seems permanent.

All our efforts, so futile

       richly rewarded!

All our striving, so absurd,

       the only noble thing!

-----------

The present,

the real,

the only certain thing: –

       my limbs’ mark,

       the sign of putrefaction!

XXII

Of love the grown-ups do not speak

to the lad who is in anguish.

The path to death the old man

takes alone in torment.

       Yes, all the gravity of life

       must be learnt alone.

XXIII

Misty my gaze:

looks away

ever further away.

As if earlier

clear-sightedness had been

in what was closest?

No, I see

I’ve never seen –

never perceived

what is closest to me.

XXIV

Crow on chimney presses.

       Seeks a smidgin of warmth.

I have recourse to the same

       in memory of you.

XXV

Understand first now

what I’ve always known.

       To live

       Is to be crushed.

       To live on –

       become whole anew.

XXVI

Good thing no one can hear me – except the Lord

on high! From where he has seen so much devilry.

Buchenwald, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nicaragua and Gulag.

The question is whether he is in the slightest bit

interested in me lying here in Växjö

awake in my white nightshirt and howling soul.

XXVII

                                                                Inspection of Granhult’s old church

‘The evil elf bit without warning deep into my heart.’

Then did I flee to the Lord’s sacred sanctuary –

but found here too a place full of Devils painted on wood

in great magnificence, in green and gold, with jowls

run red and venom running down for a hundred years.

What succour came from the Vicar’s words and Dove above his head!

I was tormented by endless singing, from old crones with dragons’

necks and old men like me on the edge of the grave.

Only a deceased field-mouse under the pew kept my heart

awake. Finally the litany was over. We trooped out like

criminals. Though in the parish house the soul felt freer.

– God’s word is great; but its light does not light up our dead bodies

until after talk of this and that and several cups of coffee.

Seductive voices

Goddesses

and other indecencies

The view of the old man

‘Les Maîtres de l’Affiche’

Shifts a tray to lap height.

Shoulders narrow, hips broad, head dexterously

                                                                covered by a dreamcloth.

Then she comes forward: ‘Prenez du Cacao!’

Rowan-berry necklace, rosy lips, sleep-drowsy eyes.

Over over-ripe breasts a gleaming shawl

                                                                of flowers,

Ankle-length scented skirt, feet wheaten-bread-white.

Then she comes forward in gold-print: a Van Houten’s advert.

Memory and dream all in one, a drink for the feeble old man.

The young woman

Turns towards him: bites into

his loneliness. Suddenly

death gives a start. The many meaningless years

rise up defiantly: head of rose petals.

Fingers that are covered in emeralds and kisses.

And how obscene her guileless gesture.

‘Die Frau und der Greis’

Hamburger Kunsthalle

With her gaze she measures dispassionately

but insatiably his sex. Hung

up in the Seventh salon. She sees

as in her memory a husband, a lover,

a stranger always present. A gaze,

a hand that lends a shimmer to the painting

                                    of timeless security. – Oh, futility!

Love’s last act

Two nymphs by the Neva, the one skinny as death,

the other chops-smackingly fat with piggy-pink skin.

To their concealed retreat they invited The old man,

tasted his sex, opened their double

                                                                lips:

heat with the fat one, snow with the thin one,

two laps in one. Half-erect he sought his pleasure;

in vain, in despair, on stained

slavish slavonic sheets already soiled by others.

Among the rejected

At the teeming bottom among the swollen

bellies jostles also the often

practised flight, thrusts deeper

into the alienation, joyously.

. . .

Is rejected and born anew

tastes the loneliness immeasurably

squeezed in the cold

sea of power-gorged bellies.

Eddies in Norrström

Feb. 1989, à propos PM 100

A little finger, lifted at the Devil:

transparent bustling shrimp in suddenly deep water

with Fi – the Evil One, himself invisible,

close by. Neon strip provides moonlight

in the night and computer screens blink. When day

breaks: in a neat unprofitability

estimate Welfare lined up

for execution by Expressen, a

placard. Trippingly arriving the grizzled

                                                                Crab.

Poised for flight

A crow flew out

the small holes’s nook.

On his bent toe

its landing took.

                      -----------

And on a pine-branch it then sat.

– This life is oh so grey and matt!

She waits, she waits while time now flies 

the pale old man’s demise.

Then flew off with a wave

and laughs upon his grave.

Poor old man

Poor Old Man, why your striving?

Scatter your silver; give the young

Nymph sex’s pearls; dry away

your nose’s tears! Be glad that the hour

is still in place – soon another Guest will arrive!

Soon you will rest bloodless and pale, and but

four planks’ eye-porch see you!

Dies advesperascit

Signs of insight

‘Immortality is something far too large

and something far too small.’

A new earth

2 Peter 3: 13-14

Is it the heavens that have made earthly life

worth living? The heavens with angel-like

cloud-wings. The heavens with their gleaming hem

now in an incipient autumn: perhaps the last.

All of them looked up to the heavens –

father and mother, their fathers and mothers:

casual labourers, crofters, enslaved smiths

Yes, over all the earth’s people in need arches incomprehensibly

a heavenly assurance: of another life –

a life, worth living.

Stretch out your hand

Just trifling matters – trifles! That

is what I busy myself with while waiting

for the great matter, for death.

It would be better for me to calm down,

cross my legs, close my eyes

like the all-wise Buddha

waiting.

. . .

No, think, take yet one more step

on the long road to life –

the greatest:

that which time after time today is denied

millions who hunger and thirst!

Open your eyes, stretch out your hand!

The word of the Bible

Such is the Word:

a necessary commodity! A bowl

of rice to hold in the hand.

A cup of hot tea with honey.

A piece of meat for one who is hungry.

Consolation to the one asking

       for justice.

The prayer

Who can I speak to?

To you, who are not here

       and yet present.

You who without touching me

       takes hold of my hand.

You who lead me

       where the eye cannot see. To you

I whisper in the dark.

Eternal landscape

They still speak to me,

       the trees, the clouds, the blood-

red houses: ever eternal.

       Transient am only I who observe.

Soon it will be over – my time.

       To others they will then speak.

Ancient Chinese motif

Defiantly at the sky

the water buffalo turns its muzzle.

There is power in his loins

       though his sex is maimed.

Lyrically curved his horns.

Humbly though the old Chinese

peasant pauses; reins in his hand.

Wordlessly he asks the highest of the gods,

Buddha, concerning the end of his day’s work.

The grove of wisdom

Other there at the limit of the terrace house’s land

a hedge of spirea, bower of roses, a corner

                                                                for herbs.

Such was the intention, and likewise a grove for

                                                                contemplation.

. . .

The hedge has been planted. The roses set out.

Thyme, sage, chervil and oregano

                                                                plants...

The start then of a grove

but no time left for the Contemplation.

----------------

And yet already an insight about that I

have lacked and never had time for

at times it seem to me worth all my efforts.

Working in the garden promots a certainty

about wisdom – something God alone gives time and space for

                                                                in the heart.

The greatness of the perishable

Imagine the world – solely as

a notion... What a pitiful

fabrication! Without the richness

of the transient. Without the diversity

of all repetition. Without light’s endless

wanderings in the slope of pines outside your window –

The poet and the mirror

Poem – a form of lonely address.

Seeing oneself in a mirror – with a gilt frame!

No one pays you any attention any longer –

no one! Who listens. Who answers.

Soon only an empty frame around a stained pane of glass.

Even so for some time yet there is reflected a piece of

                                                                the sky, a sighing tree.

Journey in the memory

‘Noch nicht in Prag!’ The long longed-for journey rattles

like a third-class compartment. Still travelling the same way,

and our gazes as then fixed on our separate landscapes.

You see a valley, I the bare side of the mountain.

Your gaze, veiled, dreams of a goal, a city, a space.

I linger in the memory of the life I am leaving.

Your hand is soil; but the memory of it still in hand.

We are travelling then... I am travelling then... on this silent journey.

– An insight, though almost twenty years too late, that just a word, yes, just

a look of mutual understanding can cure loneliness and powerlessness!

Aphrodite

Born out of the sea’s foam:

a whitened shore, your hip,

that rouses the memory. Not words,

just the line of the body; havy with desire

is the thought that destroys. All that is

left to me is this moment:

a hip that is turned towards me;

a desire that is roused, a line of memory,

a shore that still exists, and the sea’s

                                                                surf.

The old man and Time

Enclosed, shut in,

shy: behind the curtain.

The birds, the unanswered.

The questions, the unanswered.

Drops of rain falling.

Secure in the nameless,

secure in the timeless –

the unheeded.

And the clock on the wall wide-eyed

                                                                counts.

Poem with needle and thread

A monogram. Like a poem –

prick precisely with the needle, and even stitches!

A time for reflection – in all

                                    the thoughtlessness of the everyday.

Still precious, though sewn on a pillow.

A faded tose – a witness

of our time of trust, years that have flown.

The while with Jesus

Overmanned around two o’clock

in the afternoon. Then the knee bends and

the eye blinks. Her white head sinks

to rest on an embroidered cushion: ‘A little while

with Jesus!’ Rose-crocheted bedspread

gives warmth to dry limbs and likewise

                                    to her soul a blanket.

So too she imagines the end: As a rest,

though longer, close to Christ’s rose-garden.

– Lived alone, died alone; yet the Lord

gently covers her with sleep.

The Hyacinth and the Eternal

The scent of the hyacinth in the Vicar’s window – he sniffs

half with reverence; hair in his nose. Ah, the flower soon

perishes! A shrunken bulb remains but will re-

form next year: a symbol (for his sermon)

of life and transience!

Exuberant life’s short fullness. It dries out, dies

and is constantly born anew: A premonition is roused

of the order of eternity... Yes, why not grasp

this, old man! The musty smell comes, Vicar,

from your own person – your selfishness and your old

                                                                dreams of immortality.

The lion’s voice

For Björn Wester

When Buddha has spoken, his words

are confirmed by a distant roaring lion in the mountains.

– That is what you related on your final sick-bed.

Brother, your learning was great, but greater

your insight into life and death. High-heeled

lady’s shoes still stand on the shelf next to the Book of Death:

‘Toure of all Toures: and Teacheth a Man for to Die!’

Your voice was faint, a hoarse but penetrating

whisper reached my ear: Learn to die – and you learn

                                                                                                   to live!

The graphic artist

For Björn Jonson

Dirty little old man on the porch. Squints

at the morning sun – yellow as at Utamaro!

Lifts his hand so as to grasp

the light, his tools (long unused)

– felt-tip pen, rice paper; his clawlike fingers

fumble. Nothing remains here. Dispersed by the wind,

to connoisseurs, artdealers, his noble

                                                                proletarian graphics.

The backyard’s immeasurable light measured up, preserved

                                                                in thin lines.

– Death his partner... but to life he has left

                                                                the observation, indelible!

The thankless old man

‘I am no longer happy, I just am!’

Said the old man and lifted his eye.

But the winter wanes; spring whispers

messages to leaf and stem; and the wise

squirrel darts. The mist raises houses and lake,

and the dew gleams. So does the young

summer re-awaken life, without you having

raised a finger Yourself! – Thank the Lord,

old man, for the day that without you

                                                                is being born!

The blind crow

Consider the birds! Their

preparations are not for certain

death – but for uncertain

life. The nutcracker hoards thousands

of pine seeds for the winter, trusts in the weather.

As do I, blind in my faith

in fleeting earthly life.