One of my PA poems

THE ART OF SWIMMING

pa never learned to swim

once a year

he stood in grey woollen trunks

off the shore

with swan-wing shoulders

his unaccustomed flesh

blinking at the light

i’m unable to swim

pa confessed

but able to believe

i can

it’s a knack i have

lucky pa

swimming in eternity

Rain poem by the Danish writer Viggo Stuckenberg (1863-1905)

Spring rain

The rain falls on the marshes,

so fine and steady, mild and soft,

a rain that’s grey with growing,

a dew of life, that from aloft

towards earth’s heart is streaming

Like crystal pearls so tiny

within marsh marigolds’ embrace

the droplets’ glossy moisture,

and blackthorn leaves with coated glaze

midst snow-white buds are gleaming.

The yellow grass, the fragile,

the silky brown stems of the reeds

are silently aquiver,

and cobwebs’ silver veils like beads

twine round the blades now greening.

The rain falls on the marshes,

the day so quietly moves along,

a single small bird’s cheeping

and now it chirps its springtime song

while down the rain is streaming.

Poem from '1001 POEMS' by the Danish writer Klaus Høeck

 

            on the one hand lan

            guage is much too small

and tends to constrict rea

lity with its net of lo

            gic and on the oth

            er hand language tends

            to be much too big

            rambling away in

its own cockandbull stories

write the poem where language

            and reality

            are weighted the same

'Lysets Engel gaar med Glans' - one of Ingemann's famous 'Morgensange'

B.S. Ingemann's 'Morgensange for Børn' ( 1837) and 'Syv Aftensange' (1838) are among the most well-known poems in the Danish language, due in part to Weyse's fine musical arrangements of them. These morning and evening songs have a distinctly Romantic view of childhood and an idyllic atmosphere. Their language is on the whole simple, with the occasional archaic throwback to a 'kings and castles' mode. Aksel Schiøtz has recorded many of the songs, but, as so often happens with Weyse's 6/8 and 2/4 melodies, they are turned into plodding 4/4 and thereby lose a lot of their lightness and momentum. There is an interesting arrangement for soprano and contralto duet + piano of these songs by V.E. Bielefeldt - highly usable for church concerts I have discovered. Audiences gasp at the tempo, but the songs come to life.

Gleaming bright, light’s angel see

Gleaming bright, light’s angel see
pass through heaven’s portal.

All of night’s black shadows flee

at God’s angel’s radiance immortal.

God’s light in his eye, the sun

o’er the world is gliding:

see! God’s envoy has begun,

high above on golden clouds he’s riding.

O’er the earth the angel spreads

God’s skies in their gleaming,

in his cloak of gauze-like threads

he enfolds the world so gaily teeming.

Rich man, poor man, great and small,

on them both sun’s peeping,

from above he sees them all,

kisses infants in their cradles sleeping.

Us the angel from on high

too would be embracing;

us he smiles at from the sky,

as God’s heav’nly gleam he’s tracing.

Us too does our Lord hold dear:

on each soul he gazes;

in each sunbeam God is near

and he hears our joyous morning praises.

Poem by Co Woudsma. For non-madurodam fans, check this miniature world on the Internet!

MADURODAM

I’m big enough now, at my feet

lies the entire length of the street.

Walk through the essence of this land:

a canal that is house-hedged,

a cow down by the water’s edge.

Everything keeping time:

the march instructor, the conductor.

the bell-tower that must always chime.

Faint hubbub from the moving trail

though Dutch is whispered without fail

with Surinamese true to scale.

We giants do no harm,

take churches in our arms,

put out a pilot flame maybe

and from this good vale take our leave.

Life’s not too big there after all,

those who die there are really small.

B.S. Ingemann poem, set to music by Niels W. Gade

On Sjølund’s plains so pleasing

On Sjølund’s plains so pleasing

down by the Baltic shore,

where woods with wreaths are friezing

the flower-strewn meadow-floor,

where silver streams now softly

glide past the ruin’s foot,

in ancient times a lofty

royal castle there once stood.

In golden halls so stately

a merry life was led,

where all did pleasure greatly

and jesting words were said:

King Valdemar had built there

his stronghold to defend

his life against all ill there

until the world should end.

With hunters he went riding,

upon his milk-white steed,

o’er hill and dale, fast striding

no danger did he heed;

but at the hounds’ loud baying,

the horn’s shrill calls far-flung,

they all forgot their praying

no holy mass heard sung.

Long since deep in the earth has

King Valdemar been laid,

in legends strange and terse has

his Hunt though been portrayed.

The farmer, poor man, crosses

himself aghast from fright

when hounds and hunters’ horses

tear past him late at night.

Poem by the Dutch writer Co Woudsma

SMALL WORLD

Right here and here only. Powerlines seem clean

erased. The birds as if evaporated.

The low red-orange sun hangs drying, sated.

Things hurt less mixed with mist, the pain’s less keen.

More ditch is born for every move ahead.

The waters are becalmed by freezing weather –

Moroccan girls stand studying together

the surface of fresh ice. The fish want bread.

The world now trails the walker, rests alone

each time he strays inside the whitish night

and in the silence does not know what land

it is surrounds him and what coast unknown

is creaking. But behind a floating light

the gate waits of the Chinese restaurant.

A Komrij poem from 'Smoke without Fire'

PREACHER

What gain does man derive from all his toil?
He steps from stalk to stalk across the mire,
Derided by the rainbow as he goes.

He cannot get enough of empty shows,
A borrowed jacket still is his attire
When, with closed eyes, he’s destined for the soil.

He who as mighty despot just held sway,
As pious vicar or as sage well-read,
Who just paraded as spes patriae

With colour in his cheeks and springy tread,
It’s hard to comprehend, but anyway,
Is dead and dead and dead and dead and dead.

Well-known midsummer poem by the Danish writer Ulf Hoffmann

Sweet is Denmark’s fragrance

at midsummer’s coming

feel the light, scents, humming

almost whisper: Stay!

Starlings, thrushes, hear them,

joy will soon draw near them,

new life come to cheer them,

though the leaves soon must,

all too soon be dust.

Dust and dust and dust.

Sweet is Denmark’s fragrance

in midsummer’s night now,

dream that you’re eighteen, how

your hair’s moist with dew.

Elders lining pathways

and a shawm’s glad forays:

would you own them always

ere all disappears

for how many years?

Years and years and years.

Sweet is Denmark’s fragrance

in midsummer’s showers,

find at daybreak bowers

in a haze of wine.

Nightingales still hidden,

from sweet slumber risen

hear you ask unbidden:

Will you be my own?

I am yours alone.

Yours and yours alone.