Wednesday 31 July 2024

Pär Lagerkvist: 'Som ett blommande mandelträd'




Som ett blommande mandelträd,

 

Som ett blommande mandelträd,

är hon som jag har kär:

Sjung du vind, sjung sakta för mig,

om hur ljuvlig hon är.

 

Som ett blommande mandelträd,

så späd, så ljus och skär:

Bara du, ömmaste morgonvind,

vet hur ljuvlig hon är.

 

Som ett blommande mandelträd,

är hon som jag har kär:

När det nu mörknar så tungt omkring mig,

kan hon väl leva här?

 

 

Like a blossoming almond tree

 

Like a blossoming almond tree

is she who I hold dear:

Sing oh wind, sing softly for me

of her beauty so clear.

 

Like a blossoming almond tree

so slight, so light and sheer:

Only you, tenderest morning wind

know her beauty so clear.

 

Like a blossoming almond tree

is she who I hold dear:

Now that it darkens like lead around me,

can life for her be here?

 

 

Pär Lagerkvist: 'Uråldrig är den väg vår tanke följer'


 

Uråldrig är den väg vår tanke följer

 

Uråldrig är den väg vår tanke följer,

i urtidsdunkel sig dess början döljer,

i mänskohåla, som var djurs förut.

Medveten blev vår värld blott dels, till slut.

 

Hur än I himlar oss åt er invigen,

bakom oss ringlar alltid grottbjörnstigen

ur fuktig håla, fylld av multna ben,

utdöda släktens, våra egna sen.

 

Var dröm, var aning som vi helig kände

som djurisk lust i det förflutna brände,

var himmelsk väg att släcka själens törst

var djungelstig, var något annat först.

 

Ur urskogsdjupen upp mot ljus sig höjer

vår mänskoväg och uti rymder dröjer

där intet öga förr sig skådat kring.

Men blickens strålglans döljer dunkla ting.

 

För långt från komna öppnas salar höga,

mot himmelsk klarhet skådar djurets öga

och speglar andens värld, eteriskt tunn,

med innebörden i uråldrig brunn.

 

 

Primordial is the path our thoughts are bidden,

 

Primordial is the path our thoughts are bidden,

in primal dark its origins are hidden,

in human caves beasts lived in previously.

Our world but partly conscious, finally.

 

In vain oh heavens you initiate us,

always behind, the cave bear’s trail predates us

from dank, dark den with piles of mouldy bones

of former generations, soon our own.

 

Each dream, presentiment, which we judged holy,

in past times burned as brutish lusting only,

each heavenly path to slake our soul’s great thirst

was something else, a jungle path at first.

 

Our path up from primeval forests bears us

towards the light, in space it then prepares us

for realms to human eyes completely new.

Its radiance dark things though hides from view.

 

Each hall for those come far, doors open, blazes,

at heavenly clarity the beast’s eye gazes

reflects the spirit world, the thinnest shell,

its implications in an ancient well.



Saturday 27 July 2024

H.C. Andersen: from 'Aarets tolv Maaneder' (March)

 


Poetry

 

You are a thought divine, O Poetry,

From the great father-heart derives your coming,

Your soul is power, your speech a melody,

Your smile life’s pain on earth too sweetly numbing.

Your garment is each wood where growth presides,

Red lava, mountain tops in clouds’ soft rustle,

The sea’s depths where Leviathan resides,

Even the largest cities’ endless hustle.

For you life’s bible never is shut tight,

Your home is every realm the earth advances,

The galaxy is traversed by your flight,

A diadem of stars your brow enhances!

Thus by each fervent mind you are perceived,

Both soul and thought your godliness intuit,

Each child within your heaven’s well-received,

Your godly treasure’s free for us to view it. –

Sometimes the world will glance up at your flight,

Although the world’s so much to occupy it,

And many a scholar tells of you aright

And teaches those keen learners to apply it –

Those few – just what the master meant and thought,

The endless body portioned out and rationed,

And see that poetry’s a thing well-wrought, 

The poet zealous, one who crafts and fashions,

An educated man, one all can prize

Who honestly prepares the soup for dinner

Who skilfully a peach stone can excise

And split hairs like a jockey rides a winner,

Who states that ‘Poetry is light that’s shaped

From outside as a candle brightly gleaming,

But not some plant which, during night’s cold drape

And day’s hot fire, from inside starts its streaming.’

It does not falsely grow against a wall,

A plant whose shape by shears has been degraded,

But on its natural force can always call

and show that light streams from within unaided!

– When sun’s bright rays pass through a window pane,

A million grains of dust your eyes discover,

Though there’s no pollen that you thereby gain,

No, they’re just specks of dirt whose life’s soon over,

If blown on, only dust swirls like some thread,

Forms shapes and patterns, waves one can exult in,

But, day’s sun set, a product that is dead

Is what this frantic striving did result in.

The bard, Prometheus-like, stands on our coast,

With time’s great clock his heartbeats throb enchanted,

A world’s tears have his heaving breast as host.

Angelic flight to every thought’s been granted,

Leapfrog and making frills are both decried

And pretty tunes are something that he curses,

For then the muse would flee with one great sigh,

And his heart’s voice divine would cease its verses.

True poetry, if form’s constraints be cut,

Will mean that even prose can shine as brightly,

Prosaic thought though, form-bewitched, is but

Base metal that’s non-fireproof and unsightly.

Let rabble praise the finery they see,

The leaping and the pithy pirouetting

To find here Paul and Peter causes glee,

How, like the sun, they’re spotted at close vetting. –

No, up to heaven’s sun the proud muse flies,

She views both ocean desert and small river

The poet’s heart in violets she spies,

And every bird in hedgerow song aquiver.

She’s silent at her much-loved poet’s grave,

For he resides where she too has her dwelling;

But what he to the whole world freely gave

Now names him – for its voice came through his telling.

And spring by its hard battles makes us see

That life a passageway through death’s ice presses,

This was and will be so eternally,

The powerful spirit must tame forms’ excesses.

The sun’s rays in the sky to no extent

The flower’s lovely calyx ever fashion,

Nor can they ever fill it with fine scent, 

No, from within comes all creative passion.


To see the original, go to here.

 

 


 

Tuesday 23 July 2024

Lennart Sjögren: 'I lövfällningen'

 



In the leaf-shedding season

 

In the leaf-shedding season

it is

as if what was low becomes higher

and what was sound

becomes silence

the migrant birds that have arrived belatedly

are in for an uncertain winter.

 

It sometimes happens that children

born in the spring

have already shrunk into old people.

They hold out their hands

as if they had been condemned

to become joyless beggars.

Yes

even the sails

now approaching harbours

resemble overripe fruit.

 

Among the remains of

the gutted house

after this summer’s last thunderstorm

the old man living there holds up

a refound nail

in front of his face.

 

And it is as if leaves and beggars

and the children and the very old

were engaged in some other conversation.

 

Lennart Sjögren: 'Angående två målningar'



 

Regarding two paintings

 

 

I

 

In pictures by Cranach the Elder

one often sees animals being hunted by hounds

over precipices.

They fall into the river, they break legs

and skulls.

The hounds go on barking

and the huntsmen ruddy-cheeked

fill their bellies

forcing in even more food.

 

In the background white-hued women are waiting

hunting horns are heard in the air

daggers are kept hidden in folds of clothing

or pointed at hearts.



 




 

II

 

In this painting by Brueghel the Elder

Saul commits suicide

he is surrounded by a forest of lances,

but he is alone with his open breast

into which he now thrusts the blade.

 

It is dark

the glaze maintains its wall

between us and the one now dying.

It is a matter of urgency for us

that such dreams exist

urgent that between us and what is more onerous

there is a silence of varnish

which says:

 

do not worry

you are not Saul, you are not the stags

you are not the lance or

the restless horses.

I exist between you

and what is onerous

that is why the art of painting

in this century is still possible.

  

Lennart Sjögren: 'Fågelkvinnan'


 

The bird-woman

 

A woman with a bird’s mouth

becomes visible

she smiles like nightjars commonly do.

And those who are afraid

of life

go on fearing

and those who play go on playing.

And those who hush

and always look away

go on doing so.

But

the bird-woman herself steps aside

and says

with this inimitable smile of hers

completely devoid of sympathy

like the consolation of forest and water:

You

perhaps believe that I am death

which of course I am not

and I am not life either.

I

am a hybrid creature

my claws I latch onto the dead

my beak is turned toward the living

in the forest I fly off

to those unborn.

Like you

and the others I drink water

and exist on berries and creatures smaller than myself.

In that

which is underground I seek sleep

but sleep is not given me.

My mouth

that smiles – that is how I was created.

And just as little as I know

what life or death carry in their folds

when they like owls

see me through the darkness

do I know what my smile means.

 

 

(The nocturnal nightjar is a wide-mouthed, insect-eating summer visitor to moors and forests.)


Monday 22 July 2024

Lennart Sjögren: 'Grodan'


 

Grodan

 

Att söka sig till avskilda platser

i landskapet eller i själen

är lika förrädiskt

som de kinesiskt lärde

de som trodde sig veta Taos väg.

 

Det leder till grinighet

till föreställningen om kejsarens värde

och sist till inbilskhet.

 

Bättre är då att lyssna till åskan

och se blixtarna som så snabbt kan ödelägga

ett helt liv.

 

Skatan har min ynnest

liksom de undrande mössen framför fällan

 

men mest grodan

hon som bara glor och glor

hon i det nedersta kalla

som en kort stund kväker till månen

innan vägarna tar hennes liv.

 

 

The frog

 

To search for secluded places

in the landscape or the soul

is just as treacherous

as the Chinese scholars

those convinced they knew the path of Tao.

 

It leads to fractiousness

to the notion of the emperor’s value

and ultimately to arrogance

 

It is better then to listen to thunder

and gaze at lightning that so swiftly can destroy

an entire life.

 

I favour the magpie

as well as the wondering mice before the trap

 

But most of all the frog

that just stares and stares

down in the profoundest cold

that croaks briefly at the moon

before the paths take its life.

 

 

Lennart Sjögren: 'Lungan'

 


The lung

 

A lung lies on an islet

or rather on a tussock

in the smallish lake

and all around is forest

that is never-ending.

 

It seems to be still breathing

It says: look, I’m alive!

 

It has been removed from something that was

larger

from anything that existed in the sphere

of either animals or humans.

 

The birds here fly low and obliquely

they glide towards the surface of the water

but finally shy away.

No, no end is there to the forests

and the towns spread out like fish roe

in all that resembles congealed water.

The railway tracks unfurl their meanders

as if life was nothing else

than constant farewells and returns.

 

To be part of this travelling

which is an inward journey

and the lung that still lies there

in the small lake

and is scarcely visibly breathing.

 

As evening draws near it shimmers like opal

little remains of its light shade of pink.

It could be from a human being

that left its body

before dissection took place.

But it is more likely

that it derives from some everyday poaching

now before winter

now before the thin and hazardous ice.

 

*

 

As night falls the signposts disappear

only the lung indicates the way.

 

Older than any legend

although just recently excised

it tells you who you are,

and your embarrassment subsides

when you have listened long enough

And your face (that which you regarded as yours)

becomes increasingly erased in the twilight.

And

when it

says about itself: I was once two

the one half was taken away or eaten up

and actually died after a long loss of blood

I was borne by strong bird’s claws

to this lake

the death took place elsewhere

even so I say: look, I’m alive.

Give me a hand,

one chopped off or a live one

so that I have something to hold onto

when from this place I now

descend towards what lies deeper.

 

*

 

The nights and the value they can have

To say one thing and mean something else.

Which

is the harder and more desirable art

that of telling the truth or of lying

Which is it harder to retain

to die for and to live for.

 

If what the lung now says

that it was borne here by claws

then one’s conception of an act committed

on the spot becomes invalid

and the forest becomes even deeper.

And if it furthermore says

that it is alive

although it is not.

While what is waterlogged

continues to rise through the layers of clay

and while far off

cargo vessels and small yachts run aground

in sudden storms on other coasts

and while

the birds in here continue to fly

obliquely over the fen

because their eyes sense

as yet undiscovered traps

the lung starts to lose

its increasingly opal-tinted membrane.

It descends

emptied of blood.

 

But what one believed

was its illness

was instead a bath on the bed of the lake

and what one believed was a lie

crawled like a white slug

ever closer to the truth.

– But it was some other truth

some other attitude

that was thus revealed.

 

And yet it talked about a life.