Poem from 'Palimpsest' (2008) by the Danish writer Klaus Høeck

STANDING NUDE

(1921)

carved out of pali

sander mahogany or

teak which were the pre

ferred types of wood back

then – long live the twenties which

by the way i know

absolutely bug

ger all about but i re

ly on art which in

brief glimpses shows us

much more of the truth than his

tory ever does

To see Archipenko's sculpture, go to here.

Evert Taube's morning song at Baggensfjärden

Morning song at Baggensfjärden

Now leaves are rustling, branches shake

Now comes a breeze, now comes a breeze!

We catch between bent trees a glimpse of Baggensfjärden

Now rocks are creaking, rushes stretched

In morning mist, in morning mist

So pristine, dredged in dew, aroused from worldly slumber

Its arms by ridge on ridge,

Its lap by sea on sea

Now skywards open –

Sinister and dark is still the wave’s deep grave

The surface gleams though

In sun’s bright joyous light

The sea-gull swims in its snow-white garb

Towards the dusky shore

But past the darkened ridge,

Now dredged in gold, in lightened space

A host of clouds is hustled by unknown wind

To place unknown:

It’s daybreak

To see a photograph of Baggensfjärden, go to here.
There is a video of Sven-Bertil Taube singing the song on the Internet.
But try his earlier recorded version on Sven-Bertil Taube sjunger Evert Taube.

Poem from Klaus Høeck's collection Palimpsest

 

THE RIBBON OF EXTREMES

(1932)

throughout my entire

production runs a ribbon

of incomprehen

sibility (like

a milky way) a ribbon

of paradoxes

a thin möbius

strip that binds words and senten

ces and images

together into

the whole that makes the poems

understandable

The title refers to a painting by Yves Tanguy. To see the painting, go to here

Dèr Mouw on 'la bête d'amour'

How tender a young girl! So sweetly shy,

so childlike! And twice graceful, since she’s fair.

Her mind’s kept healthy too – she reads with care,

her mother says, the good books I supply.

She blushes at a gentleman’s salute,

and fears his terrier’s antics aren’t quite sound

with her Alsatian, two legs off the ground,

oh dear me, no! what an unseemly brute!

Louys displeases her, she finds far finer

‘der herrlichste von Allen’, and H. Heine.

She hates twice over every pert cocotte,

adores Don Juan and laughs at Don Quijote:

apparent Artemis, there lurks for sure

yearning, demonic, la bête d’amour.

Dèr Mouw on the subject of pain

God’s said to make the soul divine through pain?

None but a fool or mocker might so think:

who uses night to bleach what’s black as ink,

the impure with sticky pitch makes white again?

No, pain ennobles no one: pain turns hard.

A stinking dung-fly I became that feeds

on filth and muck, that mockingly misreads,

defiles what’s finest in the human heart.

My yearning eyes hunt misery as food,

prey hungrily on every face they see

where painful laugh is grimly etched for good

and I think eagerly: ‘Not only me!’

And, flesh-fly now, pain pierces me, for I

could just as well have been a butterfly.

Klaus Høeck: 'past' from 'LIVE'

                  past

                  no – that’s not correct

i must take back what i have

                  said gunderslev skov

                  is even more beau

tiful is the most beauti

                  ful in the country

                  here where a ship of

stone has stranded in a huge

                  foundering between

                  two eternities

washed up in the surf of net

                  tles under an oak

                  please stop oh wheel at

this outcrop of the past – i

                   say to my bike which

                  i get off and then

clamber aboard the shipwreck

                  the time amongst haw

                  thorn and groundsel con

vinced of interdependence

                  via stones and years

                  connected to death

only separated by

                  a single second

                  no poem is written

on a blank sheet of paper

                  but on other writ

                  ing it partly e

rases and partly intens

                  ifies no story

                  comes solely out of

itself but from tradition –

                  i’m literally

                  standing on histor

ic ground writing on a

                  prehistoric find

KH is referring to the dolmen found in the wood at Gunderslev that was visited by N.F.S. Grundtvig in 1808. After his visit, Grundtvig wrote a poem about the dolmen. You can see how it looked in 1857 and looks now by going here.
 

One more from 'Live' by Klaus Høeck

                  art

                  and the stage is set

this time in gammel estrup

                  without any scen

                  ery or other

trappings just like in real

                  ity and what then

                  is the difference

nothing apart from the split

                  second that separ

                  ates art and life like

an atom of infini

                  ty in the moment

                  the stage is set once

again and there we sit down

                  in the banqueting

                  hall without full-bot

tomed wigs and renaissance

                  costumes just like an

                  attentive audi

ence that is listening a

                  cross the dark abyss

                  of the centuries

like an atom of fini

                  tude in the moment

                  the stage is set for

the third time and holberg is

                  being played as u

                  sual – only during

the intervals is it  poss

                  ible to tread these

                  boards on which the com

edy is being enact

                  ed or when it is

                  all over and there

is no longer any stage

                  that can be trodden

Dèr Mouw - painting with words again!

 

Through village church’s window pane the beech

draws shadows on lit curtain’s meagre width;

next to the casing through two bright-blue slits

parallel yellow bars skim through each breach.

And on the far wall glaring sunshine lies,

sliced by thin lines to squares that brightly sprawl:

upwards round shadows creep, only to fall

quite suddenly, as if they are huge flies.

Old men and women in the paupers’ pew,

hands folded, keep the vicar well in view:

he talks of bliss that’s found in Better Lands.

In turn, through glittering holes midst beech-tree leaves

the eternal sun strews tiny golden seeds

over what now are resting, worn out hands.

The diagonal light is also a strong feature in the painting (three versions) by Charles de Groux in his ‘Le banc des pauvres’. To see a version of the work, go to here.

Another poem from Klaus Høeck's 'Live'

                  stone

                  i admit it it’s

completely way out to drive

                  all the way out to

                  hampen to write this

poem – but that’s what i’ve done

                  and now i’m standing

                  in a field where i’m

kicking at stones partly to

                  discourage festi

                  val poetry and

partly to pay my homage

                  to dr johnson

                  i scrutinise the

stones carefully how beauti

                  ful they really are

                  each one of them re

markable in some way or

                  other – one with a

                  medal ribbon di

agonally across its

                  surface another

                  with an axe blow from

the stone age finally i

                  pick up a flintstone

                  i let go of the

stone it falls to the ground – so

                  simple it is the

                  rest is twaddle a

load of codswallop or sim

                  ply stuff and nonsense

                  at best habit or

a matter of faith i get

                  into the car once

                  again and drive back

while you are reading this po

                  em as a fact now

(The expression 'ude i hampen' in danish means 'way out, far out, beyond credibility'. Opinions are divided as to its origin (see here). but it is a location slap bang in the middle of Jutland, and Klaus Høeck visits all sorts of places in Denmark in the course of his latest collection.)

Poem by the Danish writer Christine Brahe, dated 1602

 

Wi saais nu i Guds urtebed,

I Guds kiere børns gaarde,

I Guds ager leggis wi hans Sæd.

Huile om vinteren hin haarde:

Naar vaaren kommer oc solen skin,

Opuoxe wi met herlighed fin,

De deilige fruct,

Til deilige fruct oc grøde.

In God’s rich soil our bed is made,

In God’s dear children’s garden,

In God’s field we his seed are laid

To rest when frosts all harden:

When spring comes and the sun does shine.

We’ll grow magnificent and fine,

The wondrous fruit,

To wondrous fruit and harvest.

From Klaus Høeck's latest collection 'Live'

                  language

                  can i have a hof?

a what? – comes a shout so panes

                  and glasses rattle

                  the inn lady looks

sharply at me – of course she

                  knows full well what a

                  hof is – but here in

nørre snede can i have

                  a beer – here in nør

                  re snede you don’t

give yourself airs – got the mes

                  sage mister smart arse

                  so do the dia

lects cross swords as in a ven

                  detta the waitress

                  answers completely

differently to what i

                  had expected ‘to

                  day’s menu meat

loaf followed by strawberries’

                  neither more nor less

                  to put it in a

nutshell take it or leave it –

                  that’s the way it is

                  not to mention the

parting short in the inn lounge

                  at nørre snede

                  i notice that the

coffee hasn’t been put on

                  the bill and draw at

                  tention to the o

mission – you don’t need to pay

                  anything for that

                  my lad – i mean that

is just bloody fantastic

                  would you credit it

Poem by the Dutch writer Judith Herzberg

 

HAESJE

There is something of me that I am not.

To start with, while we so wondrously

lay naked there together, I resisted this:

we are not that, that is how we,

compelled by custom, present ourselves.

‘Present,’ I said, ‘in perfectly creased clothes

faultlessly ironed by servants.’

But you, with honeyed words and strokings

where I most preferred to be stroked,

could so persuade me ‘we’ll have ourselves eternalised,’

you said, ‘and later on when we no longer live

we will remain, though held apart

in each our oval painting,

eternally inseparable.

All that was over from our bed – close by

while I tried so hard to

sit still for that portait,

were the fleas, just two or three,

which beneath stiff collar and inside the dress

quite undisturbed – for I was still forbidden

to make a move – burrowed

their pillaging forays.

I put it to myself that in the light

of eternity three fleas would no longer

do much damage. But

now the two of us are long

since dead and even the oil-

portraits, hung as pendants

side by side, my husband’s oval

turned into a square and

acquired by a distant museum –

against all promises thus

cruelly separated nonetheless –

I sometimes in my memory attempt

to return to those days of posing.

What were my thoughts, how did I sit

serene like that, how, as wife of

the well-known brewer, did I stay

so cool, so noble and elevated,

how did I keep out of that portrait

what we at nightime felt together?

while even so I sat on pins

and pins what’s more that pricked.

This poem describes a picture at the Rijksmuseum. To see the portrait, go to here. 

Poem by the Swedish writer Kjell Espmark (b. 1930)

Route tournante

Cézanne has placed a surly easel

in what as yet does not exist.

He knows the geology of absence,

layer upon layer, so well that already

the naked in the canvas becomes fully authentic.

The road that winds in last year’s grass

is still only a curve in the mind,

stolen from an ancient Chinese.

It runs up into a soiled chapter

that he has scraped off with his knife –

you were never there!

Start with the shadows

and work in towards the brighter centre.

The blue-grey can tempt back a field.

Like his life this treacherous year:

the throbbing foot that refuses to heal

he may possibly have to part with.

At the same time the road that insists, once more –

what a thirst for sun!

Among the women in dark headcloths

his mother moves, bent in grief for one dead.

When the others have disappeared round the bend,

she is on an errand,

still there like a misty blue over the road.

So hard to endure any other contact –

It is colour that can make contact with the world.

He has certainly mentioned the logic. And the old woman.

But such as approximate values.

No theory can catch hold of

the raging forces within things.

Only a grip of colours

can force ‘reality’ to make a reply.

Blotch upon blotch, a stubborn scale

that lifts out a town from the town:

gables, a church tower, a possible road

and a fugue of swallows.

Each house is uninhabited: waiting

for the one with strength enough to return.

A day is a year.

Like his life –

Took decades to realise that vegetation is blue.

And now in just a few minutes he has managed

to paint the sound of bells.

The brush drops.

The canvas has forced into existence a landscape

in what simply calls itself landscape.

And the road really winds.

Every second has a moist gleam

that no one could see before.

He stands with his throbbing pain

in last year’s suddenly fresh grass.

Another butterfly/psyche poem, this time by Dèr Mouw.

 

through small blue holes, speckling from arching beech

falls on dead leaves to form a copper cover;

when shifting flecks, like shadows, hide each other,

they seem alive, motion contained in each.

Rustling, a butterfly comes on the scene,

flits cautiously among the lightest blotches;

alights; with wings stretched flat it watches –

four eyes stare sunwards with a peacock sheen.

Sprinkling quiet magic on the past, strange light,

deriving from a source well out of sight,

now sets ablaze its mottled glimmering.

My soul’s psyche, with youthful shimmering,

emerges from the old darkness cautiously

and moulds light to four stanzas’ symmetry.

The previous butterfly/psyche poem included on the blog, by Ida Gerhardt, can be found here. 

The opening four lines remind me of a poem by Stefan George, one that so far I have found completely impossible to translate. Does anyone know of an English translation?

Wir schreiten auf und ab im reichen flitter

Wir schreiten auf und ab im reichen flitter

Des buchenganges beinah bis zum tore

Und sehen aussen in dem feld vom gitter

Den mandelbaum zum zweitenmal im flore.

Wir suchen nach den schattenfreien bänken

Dort wo uns niemals fremde stimmen scheuchten ·

In träumen unsre arme sich verschränken ·

Wir laben uns am langen milden leuchten

Wir fühlen dankbar wie zu leisem brausen

Von wipfeln strahlenspuren auf uns tropfen

Und blicken nur und horchen wenn in pausen

Die reifen früchte an den boden klopfen.

 

And the last four lines of this poem remind me of an autumn poem by Hebbel. And so on and so forth. 

Beginning of a poem by Walter von der Vogelweide (1168-1228). Rodin, beware!

Ich saz ûf einem steine,

und dahte ich bein mit beine,

dar ûf satzt ich den ellenbogen,

ich hete in mîne hant gesmogen

daz kinne und ein mîn wange,

dô dâhte ich mir viel ange,

wie man zer welte solte leben, [...]

I sat upon a stone,

there cross-legged thought alone,

my elbow on my thigh I rested

my chin and one cheek now both nested

within the hollow of my hand,

and deeply sought to understand

how on this earth one ought to live, [...]

Poem from Klaus Høeck's collection 'Palimpsest'

FIELD HAND

(1985)

is god a cripple –

is god’s left hand an arti

ficial one he once

in a while unbuck

les and lays aside on a

fallen tree-trunk out

in the field to rest

for a bit in the midst of

his continued la

bours with creation –

does god show that much soli

darity with man?

To see the painting this poem refers to, go to here

A honey sonnet by Dèr Mouw

honey

I see, into a crystal-ordered whole

of liquid-golden colonnades packed tight,

– on purple heath shines August’s midday light –

an ochre honeycomb in a blue bowl.

And it’s as if small shadows half-striated

through humming, gleaming stillness leave a trace;

and it’s as if, before my mortal face,

summer stands wholly transsubstantiated.

Glacier of midday gleam, snow-clad with wax,

the silver twisting of the lamp-light glides

to fragrant vale of green-reflecting rummer

along the melting steepness of your sides.

Am I a priest? Profaner? – From sweet racks

I eat divinity of sun and summer.

Dèr Mouw is always a slight misquoter: 'Anges purs! anges radieux! Portez mon âme au sein des cieux!'

it’s summer; Sunday morning. And a scene

from distant boyhood suddenly is there:

I lie in grass, rose petals everywhere

around me – yellow, pink and white in sheen;

my mother plays the piano, the last notes

of Gounod’s Faust. Its strings I sensed vibrating,

as if within me, then reverberating

all the way up my chest and to my throat.

At which I wept and wept, till mother came,

stroked and kissed me and took me in her arms,

and, happy, I gave her the fondest name. –

I see roses. I’m grey. The memory’s still

vibrating in my throat, as if I trill

the words: ‘Anges des cieux, portez mon âme’.

Poem by the the Dutch writer Menno Wigman

 

Rorschach   

There comes a woman, one that’s tall and slim.

She speaks the language. Then a bed. Just right.

She fits just right. Still often needs repeating.

So often that she owns your daily bed,

and you the diary that’s inside her head.

There comes a white-coat with a rorschach test.

Who I might be. What I see in the blot.

What does that smartarse know of dirty tricks?

When I was made I wasn’t even there.

(It was a woman, one that’s tall and slim.

Nervous. Hung up. And idler than a rose.

She spoke with mud. She had to leave my life.)

I read the murder cases in the press.

I had a will. Read blots. Weigh up my skin.