One poem from '1001 POEMS' by the Danish writer Klaus Høeck

        beneath every so

nata is the sound of a

        second sonata

        that never saw birth - a wild

        mirror-image so

nata full of secret moon

light full of calcium and

        of pain a more beau

        tiful sonata

        perhaps than the one

that you heard played on the keys

        of reality

HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

Forunderligt at sige

Forunderligt at sige

og sært at tænke på,

at kongen til Guds rige

i stalden fødes må,

at himlens lys og ære,

det levende Guds ord,

skal husvild blandt os være,

som armods søn på jord!

Selv spurven har sin rede,

kan bygge dér og bo,

en svale ej tør lede

om nattely og ro.

De vilde dyr i hule

har hver sin egen vrå, -

skal sig min frelser skjule

i fremmed stald på strå?

Nej, kom, jeg vil oplukke

mit hjerte, sjæl og sind,

ja bede, synge, sukke:

Kom, Jesus, kom herind!

Det er ej fremmed bolig,

du den har dyre købt!

Her skal du hvile rolig

i kærligheden svøbt.

It is a wondrous story

It is a wondrous story

and strange if pondered deep

that God’s realm’s future glory

must in a manger sleep,

that heaven’s light and splendour,

the living word for sure,

shall homeless ’mongst us wander

as poorest of the poor!

A nest has e’en the sparrow

where it can built a home,

nor needs the fleeting swallow

for night-time shelter roam.

The beasts need know no anguish,

in caves there’s rest in store,-

Shall then my Saviour languish

upon some stable’s straw?

No, come, I will throw open

my heart, my soul and mind,

yes, sing, sigh, prayers have spoken,

Come, Jesus, come and find!

It is no unknown chamber,

you bought it with your blood!

Here will you sweetly slumber

in love now swathed for good.

A highly relevant poem by the Danish poet Jens August Schade

Snow

So, we got snow after all,

and there I was thinking we wouldn’t get any snow,

and it really looks as if we’re in for a right load of snow,

and not go on eternally thinking about snow without it coming.

The air too has snow in it,

it’s almost laden with snow,

perhaps there’s heavy snowfall far off,

that you can sort of feel inside you

without directly knowing it,

but that comes so that you can see it.

I’ve been hoping for snow all the time,

it’s funny even so that it came.

Yes, there it lies now –

look how white it is,

I’m really bloody pleased about it,

I’ve probably been thinking all the time that it would come.

And then all of a sudden there it is –

it’s funny even so that it comes like that

without you doing anything to make it come,

I haven’t plucked it out of the air,

it’s sort of come by itself.

(1934)

Poem by the Dutch writer Frank Koenegracht

On the far side

                                        In memoriam H.F.

On the far side, by the ruff of reeds

beneath the lovely blue sky

in the target

the arrow is motionless. But after a while

it quivers, tugs itself free,

speeds fixedly poised back across the river,

brakes hard and resumes its position on the bow

beside your steady eye.

Poem by the Dutch writer Jean-Pierre Rawie

Uplifted

If it was swans I cannot know for certain,

whose thousand wingbeats late that autumn night

lay round about the house and sang their flight,

subsiding only with dawn’s lifted curtain.

Throughout the day I walked as one elected,

as if I had been brushed by angels’ wings.

How many sleepless nights have there been since

when not one single wingbeat was detected?

Uplifted thus but once, there’s every reason

to let the sun again now call the tune:

the waxing and the waning of the moon,

the coming and the passing of the seasons.

First verse of the 'Solstice Song' by the Danish writer Johannes V. Jensen

Solstice song

Our sun has now grown cold,

we are in winter’s hold

the days are waning.

        Now, past the deepest night,

        our hope burns bright –

        yes, hope burns bright,

        for now the sun will right,

now light will soon return, the days again are gaining.

For the whole poem, go to 16.12.09

Another Lars Gustafsson poem

PLACENTA

Detta oformliga, loberade organ,

som utstötes efter födelsen.

Varken mor eller barn, neutralt,

på samma sätt som det innersta tomrummet

inne i den riktiga sömnlöslheten

är en helt och hållet neutral plats.

Det finns alltid något

som är mellan de vanliga tillstånden,

varken det ena eller det andra.

Till detta Mellan

känner jag en skev vänskap,

en släktskap till och med.

Det har den verkliga världens

stora tomma, uppriktiga ansikte.

PLACENTA

This formless, lobated organ

that is expelled after birth.

Neither mother nor child, neutral,

in the same way the innermost void

within true insomnia

is a completely neutral place.

There always exists something

that is between usual states,

neither the one nor the other.

Towards this Between

I feel a wry friendship,

a kinship even.

It has the real world’s

large vacant, candid face.

It has been drawn to my attention that there already exists a fine translation of this poem by Christopher Middleton. You can find it here. I deliberately avoid looking at other translations before attempting my own. I am convinced that any great work of poetry/music is open to many different interpretations. As long as no mistakes of interpretation are involved, it is my conviction that it is enriching to see/listen to as many versions as possible.

A poem by the Dutch poet Martinus Nijhoff

THE CLOUDS

I still wore boy’s clothes and lay side by side

Outstretched with mother in the heath’s warm lair;

Above us shifting clouds were drifting by

And mother asked me what I saw up there.

And I cried: Scandinavia, and: swans,

A lady, and: a shepherd with his sheep –

The wonders were made word and drifted on,

But I saw mother, smiling, start to weep.

Then came the time I kept the earth in sight,

Although up in the sky the clouds were rife;

I did not seek to try to catch in flight

The strange thing’s shadow as it grazed my life.

- Now on the heath my lad lies next to me

And points out what in new clouds he can spy;

I’m crying now, for far off I can see

The distant clouds that made my mother cry -

A poem by the Dutch poet Anneke Brassinga

Drift ice

The shining mist already outlines shadows.

We pull up the water right to our chins

like sheets, so ripplingly cool and fresh-starched,

we come to be bedded together, forever entwined

in the gauze of times past, when peacefully

no word we gave to what binds us, sleep

of unmoored reason, towards dreamed-up monsters.

A little-known Swedish poet this time - Gunnar Mascoll Silfverstolpe (1893-1942)

End of the summer holidays

This was the time our pockets all hung low

with fall-clipped fruit now smeared with streaks of clay.

This was the time the garden candles’ glow

lit up the crayfish dish with quivering ray.

It almost felt too cold to take a swim,

and cobwebs draped themselves round scrub and fern.

When too the last hay had been taken in,

the sky was chill and clear, the wind quite stern.

These were the days when grudgingly one weighed

each hour till summer’s quota had been filled.

This was the time when every hour displayed

an inner force that was to be distilled.

And yet at times one left all play behind

sought out a hill where it was good to lie

and with a ten-year-old’s dark-musing mind

observe the swallows’ flight and clouds file by.

One evening, with the wooden houses burnished

a glowing crimson by the sun, one left –

holding the farewell gift that summer furnished,

a bag of Astrakhans, clasped to one’s chest.

One rode off to the station, tearful-eyed,

while crickets, drunk with joy, still chirped and squealed

their final summer notes on every side

from what were empty, cattle-trampled fields.

'Stenkista' - a poem by Lars Gustafsson

Stone caisson

At a funeral

I met, for the second time in my life,

Uncle Sune.

He had a wonderfully heavy head

one of those heads

you know you would appreciate

holding in your hands and turning thoughtfully

even as a hosed-down cranium.

What are you up to now? my uncle said.

And I, caught in the middle of a rainy summer:

Building a stone caisson by the shore of Hörende lake.

(Which on that day was perfectly true

I’d actually been working on

it for weeks, to avoid doing something else.)

My uncle, with that heavy head,

looked up with fresh interest.

Really nothing else

than an old crofter from Småland:

‘Laying down a caisson. Heavy work that.’

***

I later realised that such knowledge was unusual

Most people are completely ignorant

when it comes to stone caissons.

They think you’re talking about sarcophagi,

huge coffins of stone*, neatly plinthed up

in old wearisome cathedrals,

repositories for no longer actual

rulers or insane princes

who we have no need of here.

Nordic Familybook, second edition,

naturally has plenty of information as always.

The caisson consists of a joined-together box

of sturdy timber that is towed out

to the fresh water spot you want for it.

A quay. A bridge. Wood does not rot under water.

It is then finally sunk with heavy stones,

providing the abutment you were looking for.

In a cruelly changing world.

Many old quays and bridges in Sweden,

the wise book from 1904 says,

still rest on this type of foundation.

***

I’m still busy filling mine

with all kinds of heavy stones.

When I was very young

I did not really exist anywhere.

Now, with all these heavy stones on board,

with more coming every year, dead friends,

dead relations, dead expectations,

not to mention the great blocks of what’s unfinished

that will soon start to be dimly visible above the surface

everything is pretty much fixed.

(‘Laying down a caisson. Heavy work that.’)

But this caisson and I

are not exactly the same thing.

I laid it where it lies,

as the saying is,

‘with the intention of avoiding discovery.’

(* The Swedish word ‘kista’ also means ‘coffin’)

Poem written by the Dutch poet Hans Tentije about a painting by Rembrandt

Rembrandt van Rijn – Portrait of Dr. Ephraim Bueno

ON VLOOYENBURG

‘So much has remained unwritten, so much too

that is impossible to describe because it stays

hidden to everyone for ever,’ he thinks

having shut the outer door behind him and placed

his one foot on the bottom step

in the shrouded ground-floor flat

he feels how his heart skips a beat and the blood

drains from his cheeks, catching

his breath for that one moment

just then there was, with the glittering brocades of sky

above the Leprozengracht, the loveliest part

of Vlooyenburg surely, his island in the Amstel, as never

so sharply before the feeling of being

both stranger and resident –

the cuff round the wrist of his hand

with which he grips the banisters and the collar

a flecked white, the darkness almost

swallows up the black of his top hat

still he stays motionless, his gentle, melancholy

eyes glisten as those of one who’s seen all the

pain and all sorrow of the world but nonetheless

is fond of life and gains consolation from

the ancient scriptures, from the psalms –

‘…light, yes, would dying seem to me if I knew

myself to be immortal…’

Poem by the Dutch poet Alfred Schaffer

Impasse

Seeking diversion in trifles is what keeps you going.

Practising scales. Loving someone endlessly. But,

what a letdown man is, infatuated, a slave of his organiser

and should he not fancy something, he breaks off the connection.

You smell how I decay, although I am not there, you’re lying, so I

imagine, staring enraptured at a monitor, at the first evidence

of life on Mars, there something innocent moves, something

that has a chance of success and without shifting your gaze

you grasp my hand – which is not there, hurrying to scribble

all this down, somewhere where I embark on pilgrimages

to buildings in high locations, completed long before Christ.

My hawser has snapped, I cannot heave myself on land.

When the city’s buzz soon dies away, I should see more with

these night-glasses. To make quite certain. But there’s nothing more.

A poem by the little-known Dutch poet P.A. de Génestet (1829–1861)

BOUTADE*

Oh land of filth and fog, of vile rain chill and stinging,

A sodden fetid plot of vapours dank and damp,

A vast expanse of mire and blocked roads clogged and clinging,

Brimful of gamps and gout, of toothache and of cramp!

Oh dreary mushy swamp, oh farmyard of galoshes,

With marsh frogs, dredgers, cobblers, mud gods overrun,

With every shape and size of duck that therein sploshes,

Receive this autumn dirge from your besnotted son!

To mud your claggy climate makes my blood set slowly;

Song, hunger, joy and peace are all withheld from me.

Pull your galoshes on, ancestral ground most holy,

You – not at my request – once wrested from the sea.

*A boutade is a sudden emotional outburst.

A famous Lars Gustafsson

This poem is very well known. There exists an English translation on the Internet, but to my mind it wanders too far from the original. Here is my suggestion:


Världens tystnad före Bach

Det måste ha funnits en värld före
Triosonatan i D, en värld före a-mollpartitan,
men hur var den världen?
Ett Europa av stora tomma rum utan genklang
överallt ovetande instrument,
där Musikalisches Opfer och Wohltemperiertes Klavier
aldrig hade gått över en klaviatur.
Ödsligt belägna kyrkor
där aldrig Påskpassionens sopranstämma
i hjälplös kärlek slingrat sig kring flöjtens
mildare rörelser,
stora milda landskap
där bara gamla vedhuggare hörs med sina yxor
det friska ljudet av starka hundar om vintern
och – som en klocka – skridskor som biter i glanskis;
svalorna som svirrar i sommarluften
snäckan som barnet lyssnar till
och ingenstans Bach ingenstans Bach
världens skridskotystnad före Bach



The silence of the world before Bach

There must have existed a world before
the Trio Sonata in D, a world before the A minor Partita,
but what was that world like?
A Europe of large unresonating spaces
everywhere unknowing instruments,
where Musikalisches Opfer and Wohltemperiertes Klavier
had never passed over a keyboard.
Lonely remote churches
where the soprano voice of the Easter Passion
had never in helpless love twined itself round
the gentler movements of the flute,
gentle expanses of landscape
where only old woodcutters are heard with their axes
the healthy sound of strong dogs in winter
and – like a bell – skates biting into glassy ice;
the swallows swirling in the summer air
the shell that the child listens to
and nowhere Bach nowhere Bach
skating silence of the world before Bach

Poem by the Swedish writer Lars Gustafsson

Aristotle and the crayfish

We went to buy angling-worms

in a shop clearly intended for this purpose.

And we found what we were looking for;

fat, squirming angling-worms,

a kind the fish here seem to prefer.

But in the middle of this room a large old-fashioned earthenware jar

blue, round and full of young crayfish.

And my young son was inconsolable

at having to leave these wonderful creatures.

We bought two, and released them

in our clean, glass-clear aquarium,

where the goldfish moved slowly and solemnly

like old poets in a distinguished academy. And see,

a great darkness descended upon all things:

here expressions of opinion and discussions took place

beyond our comprehension; only seaweed

that floated up to the surface bore witness to

the contention that here was secretly taking place.

On the third day the aquarium cleared once more.

And became as before. But no crayfish

were visible. We decided they now

were living like hermits, in greater wisdom,

a life far removed from the general public

down below the sand beds.

So it continued for a long time, until one day

I opened my Aristotle

and found a very small crayfish corpse

flat as a plant in a herbarium

precisely in the short section where the Philosopher

talks about memory and recollecting

the past. And this chapter

one of the best things

ever written about memory,

will now for ever be associated

with an odour not easy to forget,

one of a slightly rotten crayfish.

A poem from the cycle by the Dutch poet C.O. Jellema, based on the novella 'Lenz' by Georg Büchner

‘DEN 20. JÄNNER GING LENZ DURCHS GEBIRG’

6.

To be a bird in thought no dared intention,

while in the wood he held his left arm tight

when it would start to flap. His only right

As guest, his duty: proffering attention.

He proffered. Was the profferer. Surprised

at what he gave: his soul. In shady places

it lay like snow, maid, mother, outlined traces

of who had hosted it – a guest likewise.

If it soon melts, he thought, plants will start growing,

like me, the blossom, pollination, pledges

of fruit that with a crack will open wide.

He saw himself then as the inner edges

of many silences – not beyond knowing.

The birds stayed on the outside in the sky.

One more by Marie Howe

You can find the original here.

Skynd dig

Vi standser ved renseriet og købmanden

og benzinstationen og grøntsagshandleren og

Skynd dig skat, siger jeg, skynd dig skynd dig,

mens hun iler afsted to tre trin bag mig

med oplynet blå jakke og nedrullede sokker.

Hvor ønsker jeg at hun skal skynde sig hen? Til sin grav?

Til min? Til hvor hun en skønne dag måtte stå som fuldvoksen?

I dag, når alle ærinder til sidst er udrettet, siger jeg til hende,

Skat, jeg er ked af at jeg bliver ved at sige Skynd dig –

du går foran. Du kan være mor.

Og, Skynd dig, siger hun over skulderen, og kigger

tilbage på mig med et grin. Skynd dig nu elskling, siger hun,

skynd dig, skynd dig, og tager husnøglene fra mine hænder.

Also at the festival - the American poet Marie Howe

Here's a translation of a poem by Marie Howe you can find here

Ægteskab

Min mand kan lide at se madlavnings- og byggeprogrammerne,

Discovery Channel, og kirurgikanalen.

I aftes fortalte han os om en mand som kom ind på skadestuen

med en bajonet stukket lige igennem kraniet og hjernen.

Fik de den ud? Spurgte vi allesammen.

Det gjorde de. Og manden var ok fordi bladet passerede lige mellem

de to halvdele uden at skære dem over.

And hvem havde jaget bajonetten ind i skallen på manden? Hans kone.

En stærk kvinde, sagde nogen. Og alle var enige.

The British poet Mandy Coe

One of the most interesting poets at the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival was Mandy Coe. Here are Danish translations of three poems you can find at this website.

Køernes tyngde

Køer er usandsynlig tunge,
de er den mørke materie
astrofysikere taler om.
Hele universets tyngde
kan gøres rede for, hvis
du inkluderer køer.

Det er denne tyngde der får
hovene til at splatte ud i mudret,
trækker mælk ned til sprængfyldte
patter, gør at kokasser klasker
jorden med uhyggelig kraft.

Selv malket
bevæger de sig tungt.
Med krummede knoklede rygge
under svien af auktionsholderens kæp
exer og vakler de
som om selve knoglerne
var støbt om fra jernsenge
rustent parkgitter

At se en ko hejset
op i luften ved det ene bagben
er at være vidne til
en planets død.



Tegn

En mand gav mig denne hund.
Fordi han havde tegnet hende, har hun kun to ben,
men fra siden ser hun da fin ud.

Jeg vandt hende i et terningsspil: et ottekast.
Hun har et alligatorgrin
som holder børn og banditter borte.

Værsgo’, hun bider ikke
der ser bare sådan ud
fordi fyren tegnede hende om natten

da han var stangstiv.
Han skal have tegnet en mand, et hus, et gældsbrev
på et væddeløbsbillet. Med have og et træ,

men den tilhørte Stelkie Murray
og man tegner ikke på det som ikke er dit.
Der findes dog regler.

Jeg har en gang prøvet det – slikket på stiften
tegnet en mønt. Prøvet at bruge den
men den var en nitte.

Tror ikke jeg har øje for kunst
men næste gang jeg spiller Leonardo
gemmer jeg et es i ærmet;

få ham til at tegne en pige for mig,
og hvis han nu ikke er for fuld,
får jeg ham til at tegne hende forfra.



Gå i seng med en ost og pickles sandwich

Den er livsforskønnende.
Den prøver ikke at score dig.
Den skal laves.

En ost og pickles sandwich
skuffer aldrig.
Man ligger ikke og tænker:
Er jeg for fed?
For frugtbar?
For usikker?

Dine tanker er klare, dine valg enkle:
at skære den midtover
eller ikke at skære den midtover,
hvor tynd osteskiven skal være
og hvor picklesen skal placeres.

Fra en ost og pickles sandwich
forventer man hverken blomster, digte
eller tilbedelser. Man forventer
det man får:
ost ... og pickles.

Man ønsker sig, man spiser,
og bagefter har man spist.
Ikke noget med at ligge vågen og fornærmet, lyttende til dens snorken.

Sikre snacks.
Kan anbefales.

Thank you!

A big thank you from me to my audiences at the Aldeburgh poetry festival. As promised, here are the two talks I had written down but decided not to give, in order to create more time for questions. You can download the talk about the two poems here, and the Singing Danes here. Hope you like them.
If you would like to ask me anything about them, or other poetry matters, please feel free to write to me at: irons@post7.tele.dk

Not to mention the Dutch prestidigitateur Gerrit Komrij

BUGABOO

Strip me of poetry and

I’m a mailman nothing more

A counter that’s lost the score

A man with no magic wand

Divest me of my masks and

I’m a starch-necked minister

A hair-splitting word-twister

With marble grave close at hand

A bungler who’s trundling along

The sunset his ultimate stop

All love of mankind’s judged as wrong

And bunglers are all for the chop 

(To see the collection this has been taken from, go to here)

One more by Toon Tellegen

MY LAST POEM

I’m allowed just one more poem.

They’re standing behind me.

This is that poem.

It’s got to be an ordinary poem,

not an extraordinary poem,

and it doesn’t have to be all that long a poem

or a special poem for this particular occasion:

something serious or something immortal.

Not something other than otherwise.

Beginning’s the most difficult bit (the prompting).

It’s got to be finished within a certain period.

And by finished they also mean finished!

But it’s nowhere near finished yet.

It’s not even halfway finished.

Not even halfway finished... they know that one.

They pull my chair backwards.

Time for another sonnet - this time by the Dutch poet Martinus Nijhoff

The Dancer

Beneath my skin a captive beast is fenced

That thrashes and would bite a pathway free;

Its dark blood throbs, and muscles highly tensed

Tremble in such confined extremity.

Until its pain like heat flows through my veins

And forces gestures out whose tempered haste

And maintained elegance screw up its pace

Still more before it hurls aside its chains.

One must be powdered so that in one’s face

The black of open-scorching eyes alone

Betrays the madness of the inner beast.

The mouth, upturned and reddened, must display

A pride so godlike everyone should know

A broad smile is now totally released.

A poem by the German writer Reiner Kunze

TWO ROWING

Two rowing

one boat.

The one

knows the stars,

the other

knows the storms,

the one will

guide through the stars,

the other will

guide through the storms

and in the end, the very end

the sea in the memory will

be blue

Another song from 'Svantes Viser' by the Danish writer Benny Andersen

SVANTE’S BLACK SONG

I’m so tired of myself and all my stoppings.

And my body causes me dismay.

What use is it my liver’s size keeps dropping

When my belly just balloons away.

I’m prone to self-hating

Need a touch of overrating.

I’m fed up with my name, my thoughts are fleeting.

And my prayers the Lord will all ignore.

What use to me’s a heart that goes on beating

When there’s no one it is beating for.

I’m prone to self-hating

Need a touch of overrating.

I regret all my past, my birth’s distasteful.

I should not have seen the light of day.

And Nature’s been a damned sight over-wasteful

when I wasn’t strained off straight away.

I hate my self-hating

Need a touch of overrating.

I’m so tired of my voice and my handwriting

and my brain is leaden, tired and worn.

It would be oh so nice and so inviting

to forget oneself and be reborn –

be freed from self-hating

with a touch of overrating.

To hear the song, go to here.
NB The text has been slightly altered in this more recent version with Poul Dissing. My translation is of the original text.

Another poem by Jeppe Aakjær

Another evening poem, this time by a poet known for writing in Jutland dialect and poems that seem destined to be sung. Many of them have been set to music.

Other poems on the blog can be found at 29.03.10 and 09.08.10. The poem 'Now the day is full of song', at 13.04.10, is the subject of a workshop essay here.

        Evening

        Still, my heart, now sets the sun,

While the moor is resting,

        Herds now homeward are begun,

And the stork is nesting.

        Still, my heart, now sets the sun.

        O’er the moor-path silence falls

As on roads so winding.

        A late bumblebee is all

Keenest ears are finding.

        Still, my heart, now sets the sun.

        Briefly now the lapwing flies

O’er the bog-pond’s blushes,

        Ere it folds its wings and lies

’Neath a roof of rushes.

        Still, my heart, now sets the sun.

        Eastern window-panes afar

Flare up in the gloaming,

        Moorland ponds like tiny stars

Catch the sunset’s homing.

        Still, my heart, now sets the sun!

Translating a Shakespeare sonnet

LXXIII

That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou see’st the twilight of such day

As after sunset fadeth in the west;

Which by and by black night doth take away,

Death’s second self, that seals up all the rest.

In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

As the death-bed whereon it must expire,

Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by.

This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Many attempts have been made to translate this sonnet. It  is centred on the autumn-evening-dying area of what I call cyclic imagery, and the progression of the first three quatrains serves to heighten and intensify the conic dramatic effect, leading up to the wonderful ‘This thou perceiv’st’ that introduces the final couplet. At the same time, as W. Nowottny once pointed out in her analysis of this poem in ‘The Language Poets Use’, there is also extensive use of metaphor in the poem. The boughs are ‘bare ruined choirs’, i.e. choir stalls in the ruined cathedral of nature when autumn comes; black night is ‘death’s second self’, already playing on the cyclic imagery mentioned above (the imminent winter-night-death); and the third stanza takes this Chinese box effect even further by taking the image of fire (sunset of the day in quatrain two), ashes of youth, death bed and making the mental leap to line 12. As Nowottny says, metaphor within metaphor pulls the carpet out from under the feet of the reader – where is reality?
In all three quatrains, the final line sums up, or makes a comment on, the preceding three lines. So I would insist that this is retained in the translation, as it is a pivotal feature of the poem. There should be no enjambement between the third and fourth line of each quatrain, and the metaphor should not be replaced by a simile.
I would also insist that everything leads up, in a vortex of increasing intensity, to the first words in line 13.

Here are lots of translations. I would like to have included French, Italian and Spanish, for example, but have only been able to find prose translations on the Internet. All contributions welcome!

Which translation do you find the most successful – and why?

Here is my opinion of the two Danish translations:

LXXIII

Nu kan i mig du se den Aarets Tid,

da Gren og Kvist med spredt og gulnet Blad

i Luftens Kulde skælver hid og did,

en søndret Hal, hvor fugle nylig kvad.

I mig den dunkle Skumringsstund du ser,

naar Dagen solforladt i Vesten svinder,

mens Natten sort sig breder mer og mer,

hin anden Død, der alt i Hvile binder.

I mig du ser den matte Flammeglød,

som paa sin Ungdoms Aske hviler stille

og venter halvslukt paa sin snare Død,

fortært i det, som var dens Næringskilde.

Og mere kær du faar mig mod det sidste,

fordi du ved, at du mig snart skal miste.

(Adolf Hansen, 1885)

[Now you can see in me the time of the year,/when branch and twig with spread and yellowed leaves/shiver here and there in the coldness of the air,/a fragmented hall where birds recently sang (chanted).//In me you see the dark twilight hour/when day dwindles sun-abandoned in the west/while night spreads out more and more,/that second death that binds all in rest.//In me you see the dull flame-glowing,/that rests motionless on the ashes of its youth/and waits half-extinguished for its imminent death,/consumed in what was its source of nourishment.//And I am more dear to you of late,/because you know you soon will lose me.]

Comments
This is a late-19th century translation, so it must be compared with the nature of Danish language used in the poetry of the time. It is in fact free of literary, archaic language as far as I can see, something that cannot be said of the other translation.
In Hansen’s favour, he has retained the ‘in me thou mayst behold/thou see’est’ repetition of lines 1, 5 and 9 and has refrained from changing metaphors into similes. He has also let the last line of each quatrain comment on the previous three, precisely as Shakespeare does.
He has made ‘bare ruined choirs’ into a ‘fragmented hall’, which is a pity. For the original image shows us the ravaged trees as choir stalls in the ruin of some great church or cathedral. The word ‘choirs’ need not be so difficult to translate – the Danish word ‘kor’ means ‘chorus, choir of singers’ but also ‘chancel, choir’ as part of a church. ‘Et søndret kor’ would have fitted just like that.
I am impressed by the three quatrains, although i think ‘fortært i’ ought to be ‘fortært af’.
What lets Hansen down is the final couplet. The whole poem is leading up to the ‘This thou perceiv’st...’ and the effect of the realisation on the love the other person feels of the older writer – ‘to love that (person) well which thou must leave ere long’. Hansen has lost it. It reads like polite prose rather than the poetic climax to the poem.

LXXIII

Den Aarstid tegner mine Træk til fulde,

Da Løvet fældes gult, der frodigt hang

Paa Grenene, som ryster nu af Kulde,

Et ribbet Hvælv, nys fyldt af Fuglesang;

Jeg er som Dagen, der er ved at blegne

I Vest ved Solfald i sin Skumringsstund

Og snarlig for den sorte Nat skal segne,

Hin Dødens Bror, som sænker alt i Blund;

Jeg er at se som Ildens Rest, som Gløden

Der ligger paa sin Ungdoms Aske lav,

Paa Lejet, hvor den kun skal vente Døden,

Fortært af det, den hented Næring af;

Det ser du, alt med kærligere Øje,

Fordi din Ven gaar fra dig inden føje.

(V. Østerberg, 1944)

[That time of year fully describes my features,/When the leaves are shed yellow that once vigorously grew/On the branches which now shiver with cold,/A
stripped vault, recently full of bird song;//I am as the day that is about to fade/In the west at sunset in its twilight hour/And shortly will pine away in the face of black night/That brother of death who causes all to doze;// I am to be seen as the remains of the fire, as the glow/That lies on the lichen of its youth’s ashes,/On the (death) bed where it only waits for death,/Consumed by what used to nourish it;//This you see, with ever more-loving eye,/Because your friend is leaving you anon.]

Comments
This is a mid 20th century translation, so the language must be judged by the Danish used in poetry at that time. It contains many words that were definitely literary and archaic by that time: solfald = solnedgang; hin = denne (dem. pronoun); sænke i Blund = få til at sove; inden føje = snart. Clearly, rhyme is responsible for some of these choices. The style is very ‘retro’.

As mentioned in my translation criteria, lines 4, 8 and 12 should sum up the previous three lines. This Østerberg has done.
Since he has not kept the ‘in me thou mayst behold/thou see’st’ repetition of lines 1, 5 and 9, the force of the progression is lessened. Furthermore, he has fallen into the trap of replacing the metaphor by a simile in lines 5 and 9 (som = as). Once you introduce a comparison, the intensity of the poem is severely affected. The three-stage rocket effect is weakened. Finally, there is too much explanation in quatrain three – the second half of line 11 already starts to interpret instead of just describing.
Østerberg has captured the crucial slot at the beginning of line 13, but this should be followed by a crucial observation ‘which makes thy love more strong’ – ‘with ever more-loving eye’ is a very pale imitation of the original. And his ending is a disaster – ‘inden føje’ is completely unknown to most Danes and I had to consult a very large dictionary to find the expression, which should actually be ‘om føje’.
The first quatrain is definitely the best part of the translation. Certain turns of phrase and choice of vocabulary make me suspect Østerberg knew Hansen’s translation.