Henrik Nordbrandt: 'Offshore Wind' - Part V

APPLE CORE

As the most important of my principles

I always eat an apple

core and all.

So it must be her teeth

that have left their mark on that core over there

now that her lips

as the crow flies

are more than three thousand kilometres away.

It’s lying there on the stair

shrivelled, brown and just as ugly

as it is far

out of the town, through the forests, mountains, silver mines

over the sea and what you otherwise dream about

until you find your wings

and meet her in flight.

But for the time being I hate her

because she threw away that core there.

So that poor worm

which considered it its home

and had never heard of Western Philosophy

and especially Freud

as she says, as opposed

to the animals was an idiot

dried up one stair lower down.

BYROAD

When we pulled in to the side

the brambles scratched the paint of the car

to my already threadbare

irritation.

While I rummaged under the bonnet

you admired a golden bird

with a long, crimson tail

whose song soared and dipped

above the river bed among the mountains.

I too from time to time

must have cast a glance upwards

and have tuned my ear to something

else than the off-sound of the engine

I realise now, with the summer over

and us talking on the phone

from two different sides of a dark continent

where the mountain tops have begun to gleam white.

SUN-SHADOW

There is more sun than shadow in the shadow

and more shadow than sun in the sun.

The weather is tatty like a three-day-old

shirt over the back of a chair

and on my retina there is a spot

where the sun has produced a fly

in a winter-white room.

It will never go away

and exactly as far off as she is

she will never go away either

and the door she took with her when she left

so that house will never be shut

and the heart pumps in vain

because the heart’s doors are open like the house’s.

I cannot get up from the bed

and find no rest

because I cannot feel myself for flies.

‘I’ll find another woman all right,’

sounds tempting at first

but then sets my teeth on edge like sugar.

THE BLUE SHED

You mustn’t leave me, you mustn’t!

But be so kind, if you do

to take your things with you

so they won’t be left behind

in some old shed or other

as they did in the dream

I escaped from so badly last night.

It was funny enough, that shed:

It was blue, and then it was on a jetty

and through the drizzle the full moon

shone on the red shutters

where someone had painted mermaids and sea anemones.

Behind the door hung your dressing gown

the embroidered one with the tassels

and the gramophone was playing your music

precisely as we had taught it to.

Then I knew that you had left me

and that it was because of the motor bike

that I had left

behind one of the many pubs on the bathing jetty

and forgotten when I had left the place.

All night long I walked around in the rain

looking for the motor bike

a large, vulgar, chromium-plated thing

I would never have acquired myself

but now had lost

and therefore would give everything to find.

Because I couldn’t find it

your things didn’t disappear either from the blue house 

and because your things didn’t disappear

you didn’t come back either

and because you didn’t come back

I will never dream about the little blue house again.

Therefore I cannot exclude either

that in my dream

I drove into the harbour on my motor bike and drowned.

That possibly doesn’t explain all of it

but it is easier to live with

than if you had simply left me.