Monday 30 December 2013

A Henrik Nordbrandt poem for the time of year

 

BETWEEN CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR



Between Christmas and New Year
there is practically nothing.
It can almost be
in an ordinary, black handbag
of the kind midwives use
my mother used to say.
But I don’t know if that sort of logic
is applicable nowadays.
It doesn’t matter if you forget the bag.
There’s nobody, after all, who wants to have it.
Next year at the same time it’s there again
on the bench on the platform.
Nobody sits down next to it.
That’s the way it is between Christmas and New Year.
It’s a bit different, of course,
if it’s just snowed
and there’s a little snow on the top of the bag
and you can imagine
a train pulling in
out of the twilight.
That, then, is what the bag looks like.
It’s yours. Take it!
My mother won’t let on.

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