Another poem by the Swedish poetess Sophia Elisabet Brenner

 

SONNET

Til sin kiäre Man Assessoren Herr

ELIAS BRENNER,

Upå den första Januarii Anno 1691

MJn Wän! jag skulle wäl på Nyårs gåfwor täncka

Så framt förmågan/ lik som willian wore god/

Och medellößhet ei för mig i wägen stod/

Då sökte jag med flit dig något nytt at skäncka/

Dock wil jag deremot min håg på håfwor läncka/

Som icke stå til fahls i hwarie köpmans bod

Och qwinnor fordomdagz sig litet påförstod/

Jag wil i netta Rim et dußin radar/ jäncka.

Jag tror at sådan skänck dig lärer bäst behaga/

Den jag ock ingen an har ensam kåstat på/

Du kanst hwad borgat är på intet sätt fördraga/

Wi stämmom öfwerens jag säjer lika så

Man lär och aldrig mig ur sinnet kunna taga

At länte fiädrar/ hälst åt Swanar illa stå.

Ho rätt besinna wil hwart hän sig tiden smyger

Den achte grant upå wårt nybegynte år/

Det grånar mer en brått/ som snö och frost betyger/

Det åldras medan än deß födzle dag påstår.

Det börjar först i dag/ och bådar oß wår ända/

Som bäst wi samkom år/ bli wåra dagar få/

Gud ewig gode Gud/ hwars år ei återwända/

Hielp at wi oß i tid från werlden kunde slå!

Lär oß betrachta wäl hur korta wåra timar/

Och at hwart ögnableck oß skyndar til wårt mål/

Betäncka/ huru slätt sig dock tilsammans rimar/

Wårt Lif är skiört som glaß och tidsens tand af stål.

SONNET

To her dear Husband  Deputy Judge

ELIAS BRENNER,

Upon the first day of January Anno 1691

My Friend! I ought of course on New Year gifts be musing

To the extent my powers/ likewise my will were good/

And had not lack of means for this in my way stood/

Then keenly I would seek and something new be choosing/

Instead my thoughts are fixed on bounties in full ration/

Which are not found on sale in every grocer’s stall

And which by women once were scarcely grasped at all/

I will in well-turned rhymes a dozen lines/ now fashion/

I think that such a gift to you will give most pleasure/

Which I alone and no one else have laboured on/

For secondhand things you find irksome beyond measure/

And I think likewise and with you agree thereon

Nor will I e’er relinquish the idea I treasure

That borrowed feathers/ least of all befit a Swan.

Whoever would reflect on where time’s always stealing

Should note most carefully our newly started year/

It greys so fast/ as snow and frost are both revealing/

It ages even while its birth-day is still here.

It first begins today/ and yet our end presages

The more we gather years/ the fewer are our days/

Eternal God most true/ no year turns back the pages/

Help us in time to avert from this fair world our gaze!

Teach us to well observe how short is our life’s season/

How our approaching end each instant makes us feel/

To see in all combined there is both rhyme and reason/

Our life is frail as glass and time’s cogged wheel of steel.

Poem by the Swedish poetess Sophia Elisabet Brenner (1659-1730)

 

Qwinnokönetz

Oskrymtade Tårar

Fälte öfwer

Den fordom ÄDLE och WÄLBORNE/

Fru MARJA Hiärne/

Som i sine bäste och liufweste år/igenom den timmeliga

Döden blef hädanryckt/ den 11. Decemb. Anno 1690.

                        Döden som sig föresatt

                  Til sit tysta tilhåld föra/

                  Hwad hans faslig långa natt

                  En gång måtte hyglig göra/

                  Sökte nogast hwar han trodde

                  Någon utwald fägring bodde.

                 

                  Länge stod han utan hopp/

                  Om han nånsin skulle finna

                  Så fulkomlig menskio kropp/

                  Som förmåtte öfwerwinna/

                  Alt hwad kulit mörkt och öde

                  Fins i sälskap med de döde.

                 

                  Men omsider lät han se/

                  At hans anslag ikke fela/

                  Ödetz stränga Systrar tre

                  Hjulpe til at särskilt dela/

                  Hwad til werldens lust och fägnat

                  Himlen/deiligt sammanägnat.

                 

                  Sielf naturen/ grämer sig/

                  Som sit skönhetz mönster/ miste/

                  Och dit kön som genom dig/

                  Skönste/ sig behaglig wiste.

The unfeigned tears

of the female sex

Shed over

The late NOBLE and WELL-BORN/

Mistress MARJA Hiärne/

Who in her very prime/was wrested from this life

by temporal Death/ on 11 December Anno 1690.

                        Death who had made up his mind

                  For his silent haunt to capture/

                  What his endless night unkind

                  Might provide with some small rapture/

                  Sought with care where for the telling

                  Some fair beauty might be dwelling.

                 

                  Long he stood with hope forlorn/

                  That he ever would discover

                  Human flesh so pure in form/

                  It could fully triumph over/

                  All that’s dreary dark down-hearted

                  In the realm of those departed.

                 

                  But he finally could see/

                  For his plot success awaiting/

                  When austere Fate’s sisters three

                  Helped him now in extricating/

                  What for earthly joy and pleasure

                  Heaven/had composed at leisure.

                 

                  Even nature/ grieves you too/

                  Mourns her beauty’s template’s passing/

                  As your sex does which through you/

                  Prized its beauty all-surpassing.

                 

Poem by the Dutch writer K. Schippers

No, no Nanette

Before the war Tea for Two

did something for my father.

And for me too.

He walked slowly

to hear more of it

coming from a house

and so missed the No. 2 tram.

In the next one my mother was sitting.

Poem by the Swedish writer Tomas Tranströmer

Allegro

I’m playing Haydn after a black day

and feel a simple warmth in my hands.

The keys are willing. Gentle hammers strike.

The sound is green, lively and quiet.

The sound says that freedom exists

and that someone does not render unto Caesar.

I thrust my hands deep into my Haydn pockets

and imitate someone who gazes calmly at the world.

I hoist the Haydn flag – which means:

‘We won’t surrender. But want peace.’

The music is a glasshouse on the slope

where the stones fly, where the stones roll.

And the stones roll straight through

but each pane remains unbroken.

There are probably a number of English translations of this poem in existence. I have not seen any of them - I never consult other translations when making my own. Translations of the same poem are like different recordings of the same piece of music - find the one(s) you like best.

A famous song by the Swedish troubadour Evert Taube (1890-1976)

While still the boat sails along

While still the boat sails along,

while still the heartbeat is strong,

while still the sun’s rays on waves are a glittering throng,

for just a day maybe two

let that be plenty for you,

for many live with no gleam of light ever in view!

And why should you be the one the world’s giving

so much good fortune and sunshine while living?

Have fo’c’sle watch late at night

beneath the stars’ twinking light,

enjoy a kiss maybe two in the dance’s swift flight?

Yes, why should you be the one with keen hearing and eye,

catch the roar of the waves, be always singing?

And why should you have the best meal that money can buy,

like a wave-bobbing bird freed from winging?

And to the engines’ slow song,

and should your watch seem too long,

remember soon will the bell toll for you: ding, ding, dong!

While still the boat sails along,

while still the heartbeat is strong,

while still the sun’s rays on waves are a glittering throng.

Though you should suffer, perform each endeavour,

There will be rest soon for ever and ever!

But that’s no reason at all

to not be glad and stand tall,

it’s time to strike up a quite irresistable waltz!

It’s such a great stroke of luck you’re alive now, my friend

and can waltz through the day around Havanna!

And when your last money’s gone, go to sea once again

with the trade wind your sailor’s bandanna.

Do your duty aright,

Go on land that’s in sight,

Take a kiss maybe two in the dance’s swift flight!

While still the boat sails along,

while still the heartbeat is strong,

while still the sun’s rays on waves are a glittering throng.

One of the best-known of Taube's songs. To hear it sung, go to here for Evert Taube's version, or to here to hear his son Sven-Bertil's.

A poem by the Swedish Romantic poet Erik Gustaf Geijer (1783–1847)

Natthimmelen

Ensam jag skrider fram på min bana.

Längre och längre sträcker sig vägen.

Ack, uti fjärran döljes mitt mål!

Dagen sig sänker, nattlig blir rymden.

Snart blott de eviga stjärnor jag ser.

Men jag ej klagar flyende dagen.

Ej mig förfärar stundande natten.

Ty av den kärlek, som går genom världen,

föll ock en strimma in i min själ.

The night sky

Lonely along my course I move forward.

Further and further still the way stretches.

Ah, in the distance veiled is my goal!

Day is descending, night fills the heavens.

Soon stars eternal are all that I see.

But I lament not the day that is fleeing.

Nor do I dread the night that’s approaching.

For of the love which the world here suffuses

into my soul a gleam also fell.

Poem by the Danish poet Michael Strunge

Speed of life

Smash the clock

with my thoughts –

I only live

at the speed of life

Swiftly change

to a new disguise –

I need transformations

at the speed of life

Form contrasts

need no camouflage –

sick and tired of

not being myself

Change colour

anarchist chameleon –

throw off my mask

change life-form

My mind

grows out of my head –

changed minds

after having been dead

Finally

it would seem I now know –

that I do not have

an indestructible self

Who knows

knows what one’s self is like?

I couldn’t care less

myself create myself

Change speed

I need a change of speed –

I transform my life

before it transforms me

Poem from 'Variations on a theme by Silfverstolpe' by the Swedish writer Lars Gustafsson

29

(Coda: GMS dedicates the statue of Finn Malmgren)

And one winter day the friend once more stands

in the park, but this time as a statue.

He is and he is not Finn Malmgren.

Returned and not returned.

‘Maybe you’re too shy to be a statue

in this city of critical youth

and shy when you’re now forced to speak.’

All around students in white caps,

standard bearers, honoratiores in doctor’s hats.

And then this statue. Which is completely out of place.

How was it to be forced to speak?

Finn Malmgren, lost in the Arctic Ocean,

has come back again as a Stone Guest.

How does one address a statue?

One does not speak to statues.

How does one force a statue to speak?

Statues are regularly far too shy.

One can speak in their stead,

and then must pay careful attention

that the one whom one imitates

is the person, not the statue.

If statues could speak,

they would perhaps have

frighteningly deep voices,

or sound like the gnashing

one hears when an excavator

scoops deep in a quarry.

That is difficult, and hardly customary,

hardly even appropriate, to imitate.

So the speaker must

now imitate three voices:

The genuine voice of the deceased

fading fast away,

a voice from the Arctic Ocean

(‘in gasping wireless telegrams’),

another voice that is neither

that of Finn Malmgren nor the Statue

but Finn Malmgren as Statue

and that is probably quite difficult to imitate,

for Doctor Malmgren was, as far as is known,

never a statue.

And then finally, Gunnar Mascoll,

your own voice, boyish and friendly,

cultivated, slightly nasal,

a fine Englishman’s voice, but with

a slight touch of Södra Västmanland,

between Gisslarbo and Kungsör, approximately,

and with a weak melancholy fall

on the final syllable,

(but not so tired as to sound Mephistophelian),

Gunnar Mascoll,

who are you talking to?

The poet Gunnar Mascoll Silfverstolpe wrote a poem  about the Swedish meteorologist and Arctic explorer Finn Malmgren, who perished after the airship 'Italia' crashed en route for the North Pole. It was read out at the unveiling ceremony on 1 November 1931. Lars Gustafsson wrote a series of variations on this theme of Silfverstolpe, like those of Bach on the Goldberg theme. This is the Coda of that collection. For the original Silfverstolpe poem (in Swedish), go to here.

Poem (1936) by the Danish writer Tom Kristensen (1893-1974)

It is Knud who is dead

Were I today a grouse, I’d flex my wings for flight,

I’d fill my lungs with air and fly both day and night

over a winter sea blackening behind whitish foam,

through the cloud-chased December sky I’d roam.

But as a wind-tossed grouse, the sport of every gale,

north-west I’d fly to warn of storms that now hoist sail.

My heart brimful of pain, lured from within my breast

The song that soon will howl the length of Greenland’s coast.

On it would echo, covering half the world,

follow sealskin boots and all sledge tracks now unfurled.

howl in Hudson Bay as far as King William’s Land,

whisper in settlements and every distant strand.

All his old friends should be roused from a doze so light,

Clearing and Willow Twig, Auá with dog snowy-white,

all the beautiful girls with smiles broad and bright

would rise in confusion, forgetting their carefree respite.

All of them must be awakened. Sorrow’s but started,

Soon it will spread to where all Alaska’s uncharted.

The great magician is dead! The mighty wizard is dead!

Did you all hear my song? Did you all get the thread?

Islands, lands and rivers are locked with chains of ice.

The joy that warmed you all has paid the final price.

Shiver, as we all do today, our fire is dead,

for he’s forever dead, it is Knud who is dead.

Do you all understand? 

 The 'Knud' referred to is the Danish arctic explorer Knud Rasmussen. To hear a discussion of this translation, you can download a podcast of DR P1 Skønlitteratur 18.01.2012 here. The discussion starts after about 21 mins 21 secs of the programme. It is in Danish!

A 'vanitas' poem by the German writer Andreas Gryphius (1616-64)

All is vanity

You see, where’er you look, but vanity on earth!

What one man builds today, another will tear down;

where now proud cities stand, mere meadows will be found

on which a shepherd child’s seen playing with the herd,

What now is in full flower will trampled be and dead

what throbs with vibrant life will soon be ash and bone;

nought may eternal be: not ore nor marble stone.

On us now fortune smiles, but troubles loom ahead.

The fame of mighty deeds like dreams shall fade away.

Is then poor humankind, time’s plaything, here to stay?

Ah, how most everything we now consider great

is but an empty void, but shadow, dust and wind,

is but a meadow flower one can no longer find!

And what’s eternal not one man would contemplate!

For the original poem, go to here.

A poem by the Swedish writer Verner von Heidenstam (1859-1940)

Vid vägens slut

Vis, o människa, det blir du först

när du hinner till de aftonsvala

höjders topp, där jorden overskådas.

Konung, vänd dig om vid vägens slut,

vila där en stund och se tillbaka!

Allt förklaras där och allt försonas,

och din ungdoms riken hägra åter,

strödda än med ljus och morgondagg.

At the ending of the path

Wise, oh human creature, you’ll first be

when you gain the lofty summit in its

evening coolness, with the earth spread out below.

King, turn round at the ending of the path,

rest there a while and look behind you!

All is explained there, all is reconciled,

and once more your youth’s realms appear to shimmer,

still strewn with early light and morning dew.

Poem by the Swedish poet Artur Lundkvist

The magpie

my gusty temperament’s bird,

flies whirling like a helicopter,

a ball of wings in the wind.

The magpie, merry widow, laughing

despite her unprovided for young, laughing

at thefts she’s committed and thefts she is planning.

The birch tree’s own black-and-white bird,

at home even in trees that stand black in snow.

Basketless picker of autumn’s rowanberries,

with breast steel-shimmering as a frost-clear winter sky.

Farms though she loves even more than the forest,

flies through chimney smoke reeking of fried bacon,

picks up a safety pin thrown out with the baby’s

bathwater,

sits on the wooden pump listening to the separator in

the kitchen.

The magpie, cunning lass with wagging tail,

never completely young and inexperienced,

more like a gipsy girl with a silver coin in her ear,

easily seduced in late-winter’s last hay

when her feet are cold from the rain.

Though never a surly old crone like the crow

or hoarse like the raven, the roving horsedealer,

with a knife inside his coat and chewing his backy.

No, most akin to the poor vicarage miss

that dances on the ice

in spite of her tattered gloves.

The magpie with bundle of twigs and squeaky milk churn,

clad in blown-away egg-white, dipped in tar from the drainpipes,

where she whets her beak against the grindstone

and laughingly mocks young boys that climb

trees.


To see the original, go to here.

Another song from 'Fridas Visor' by the Swedish writer Birger Sjöberg

Freda spring-cleaning

(Among the trees in Freda’s father’s patch of garden he observes outside the windows, during a spring lunch break, how Freda, who has been granted time off to do the spring-cleaning, is busily on the move about the house. ---Internal hymn of love.)

Something sweet and angel-like for certain

gleams round Frieda’s head, you must admit!

More so, when behind spring’s flowery curtain

twinkle-toed I see her lightly flit!

She takes no resounding strides but nicely

tripping steps like reeds that swish when swung;

And yet Frieda does not stand precisely

on our social ladder’s highest rung.

How while working with such dedication

she remains so practical and calm,

Science must seek a cogent explanation

since I’m left quite tongue-tied by her charm.

Runs about with pail where water trembles

dries the crystals round the lamp’s thick band.

Flower or butterfly though she resembles,

or a wave that gleams on silver sand.

Swiftly is her ready cloth in motion,

while she breathes on waiting window-pane,

then her nimble hands without commotion

rub the copper pitcher bright again.

Every part of ‘Charles XII’s obsequies’

she now cleans to Boston’s cheerful airs.

How the halbadiers their king’s exequies

would forget were her hand close to theirs!

While spring breezes quiverings are raising

in the rooftop phone wires where they swarm,

the tall bureau’s china cat is gazing

in deep thought at Frieda’s bustling form.

Now my angel’s light hand wields a hammer,

this embroidery tacks to the wall:

‘Leave beneath the threshold thoughts’ high clamour

and your hat and stick out in the hall.’

Free from bitterness at what fate’s offered,

I do yet affirm with love-filled voice,

though the Alderman’s his daughter proffered,

Frieda would still be my certain choice.

Should my master with his daughter pair me:

‘Take Astrea as your future bride,’

I’d still hasten back to Frieda, where she

chases moths that in the curtains hide.

Common wind makes window panes start tinkling,

common dust around her ankles flit,

and yet something angel-like is twinkling

round fair Frieda’s head, you must admit!

Midst the pails and stools she moves so nicely,

with a queenly air her cloth is wrung.

And yet Frieda does not stand precisely

on our social ladder’s highest rung.

To see the original, go to here.

Poem by the Dutch writer Hester Knibbe

Search Expedition

Tonight wandered through a city

so done in as a body with broken

ribs and a heart laid bare. Searched

for you there with buns in my pocket, searched

for a sigh, some movement in dismantled

streets and alleys. Tonight

a moment not knowing your lair

searched for you with hope in my bones.

But no matter how much I tugged at you

with my voice and my eyes, fragments of wall

kept on growing around you, cellars seemed

to have crept on you, I stayed alone

with those buns in my pocket

just calling and walking.

For this and two other Knibbe translations, go to here

The plot thickens! Original text of 'The first time...'

 

So now there are three versions!

A real classic this one - a poem from 'Fridas Visor' by the Swedish writer Birger Sjöberg (1885-1929)

The first time...

The first time that I saw you it was a summer’s day

one morning when the sun was shining bright,

and all the meadow’s flowers, so varied in display,

in pairs stood bowing in its warming light.

So gentle was the morning breeze, and at the shore but slightly

a loving wavelet rippled round a shell the sand held tightly.

The first time that I saw you it was a summer’s day

the first time that I held your hand so lightly.

The first time that I saw you the sky was all ablaze,

so dazzling as the finely feathered swan.

There came then from the forest, the green-fringed forest’s haze,

a chorusing of birds in joyful song.

There trilled a song from high above whose beauty none could equal,

it was the tiny grey-fledged lark, as hard to glimpse as gleeful.

The first time that I saw you, the sky was all ablaze,

so dazzling and intense though without sequel.

And therefore when I see you, though it be winter's day,

with snowdrifts lying glittering and cold,

I still hear larks' quick trilling, the summer winds that stray

and spring's keen urge to even so unfold.

I still sense that from downy beds green plants would be advancing

with cornflower and with cloverleaf all lovers' joy enhancing,

that rays of summer sunshine upon your features play,

which softly blush in radiance entrancing.

This is from the first of two books that are a gentle pastiche of provincial town life. To see the original, go to the Projekt Runeberg site here. There is another version of line 20, with 'vågens brus' (=the sound of the waves) instead of 'vårens frus', even in poetry anthologies, but 'vårens frus' (= the urge of spring to burst forth) seems more logical in view of the following two lines.

There are many YouTube recordings, but the version to download is by Ingvar Wixell, originally recorded in the early 1970s. It is available on iTunes 'Fridas Visor & Evert Taube'.

A poem by the Swedish poet Gunnar Ekelöf (1907-68)

Poetik

Det är till tystnaden du skall lyssna

tystnaden bakom apostroferingar, allusioner

tystnaden i retoriken

eller i det så kallade formellt fulländade

Detta är sökandet efter ett meningslöst

i det meningsfulla

och omvänt

Och allt vad jag så konstfullt söker dikta

är kontrastvis någonting konstlöst

och hela fyllnaden tom

Vad jag har skrivit

är skrivet mellan raderna

Poetics

It is the silence you’re to listen to

the silence behind quotation marks, allusions

the silence in the rhetoric

or in the so-called formally accomplished

This is the search for what’s meaningless

in the meaningful

and vice versa

And all that I artfully seek to compose

is by way of contrast something artless

and the whole fullness empty

What I have written

is written between the lines

Another sonnet from the collection 'mannen utan väg' by the Swedish poet Erik Lindegren

XXV

the faithful bee hums for the shrivelled rose

the rabid dog drinks from the sunken storm’s throat

and the flying dutchman hauls his bride on board

so as to bury himself in her fury-cut hair

at the lists the lance of the black knight grows

and in the air the tragic mask of the charwoman glitters

in the dandelion pasture even the catchfly’s tar-bubbles burst

and the butterflies’ blinkers now say their final prayer

in the skies desert-singed clouds stack from verandahs

and the pulse’s tambourine makes the virginia creeper tremble

a taboo summer squirms uneasily on crystal-clear noes

the jaws of the tiger lily sink softly into the past

from the trailer of time hurrahs are flung out at death

dully garrisons rest beneath the rain’s silent leaps