A mysterious disappearance
It
is written: In March 1858 a man,
resident
of Gnarp, which is a remote hamlet,
bought
bullets, cord and powder for a smallish sum,
one noted down that thus can still be read.
Probably
he wanted to shoot courting black grouse.
The
trail now disappears among the pines,
here
we lose sight of him,
not
temporarily but for good,
and
every hope that he exists there,
like
a dark and threadbare figure,
still
on his way across bogs, through cowberry sprigs,
and
that we one morning could meet him, is futile.
You
must understand me, consider this:
We
will never get to know who he was,
and
if our face just for a moment,
late
one evening when tiredness loosens the bindings,
and
lets us see that we are no one or are everyone,
were
to absorb his features into its own, his eyes,
we
would not notice it or be confused.
After
having gone off in search of birds,
he
is for all days and all nights to come quite lost.
from: The Balloonists
(1962)
To see the original poem, go to here
Remark for those who have a Dutch poetry calendar and have found Bernlef's translation (2 March) into Dutch - it contains an error in line 5.
ReplyDeleteVermoedelijk wilde hij voor de sport op korhoenders gaan schieten.
The original Swedish line is:
Troligen ville han skjuta orre på spel.
This is a reference to the courting of black grouse, not to any form of sport of shooting game.
Wikipedia:
Orre[2] (Tetrao tetrix) är en fågel i familjen fälthöns och underfamiljen skogshöns.[3] Orren är en stannfågel som förekommer i norra Palearktis, främst i hed- och myrlandskap i anslutning till skog. Den är nära släkt med kaukasisk orre. Inför häckningen, som sker tidigt på våren, spelar orren på specifika spelplatser.
The last sentence means. Prior to breeding, which takes place in early spring, the black grouse lekks (a technical term which looks suspiciously scandinavian to me. (to leik is also yorkshire dialect for to play, for example). presumably, while this courtship is going on, the birds are easy targets.