Poem (1936) by the Danish writer Tom Kristensen (1893-1974)

It is Knud who is dead

Were I today a grouse, I’d flex my wings for flight,

I’d fill my lungs with air and fly both day and night

over a winter sea blackening behind whitish foam,

through the cloud-chased December sky I’d roam.

But as a wind-tossed grouse, the sport of every gale,

north-west I’d fly to warn of storms that now hoist sail.

My heart brimful of pain, lured from within my breast

The song that soon will howl the length of Greenland’s coast.

On it would echo, covering half the world,

follow sealskin boots and all sledge tracks now unfurled.

howl in Hudson Bay as far as King William’s Land,

whisper in settlements and every distant strand.

All his old friends should be roused from a doze so light,

Clearing and Willow Twig, Auá with dog snowy-white,

all the beautiful girls with smiles broad and bright

would rise in confusion, forgetting their carefree respite.

All of them must be awakened. Sorrow’s but started,

Soon it will spread to where all Alaska’s uncharted.

The great magician is dead! The mighty wizard is dead!

Did you all hear my song? Did you all get the thread?

Islands, lands and rivers are locked with chains of ice.

The joy that warmed you all has paid the final price.

Shiver, as we all do today, our fire is dead,

for he’s forever dead, it is Knud who is dead.

Do you all understand? 

 The 'Knud' referred to is the Danish arctic explorer Knud Rasmussen. To hear a discussion of this translation, you can download a podcast of DR P1 Skønlitteratur 18.01.2012 here. The discussion starts after about 21 mins 21 secs of the programme. It is in Danish!

A 'vanitas' poem by the German writer Andreas Gryphius (1616-64)

All is vanity

You see, where’er you look, but vanity on earth!

What one man builds today, another will tear down;

where now proud cities stand, mere meadows will be found

on which a shepherd child’s seen playing with the herd,

What now is in full flower will trampled be and dead

what throbs with vibrant life will soon be ash and bone;

nought may eternal be: not ore nor marble stone.

On us now fortune smiles, but troubles loom ahead.

The fame of mighty deeds like dreams shall fade away.

Is then poor humankind, time’s plaything, here to stay?

Ah, how most everything we now consider great

is but an empty void, but shadow, dust and wind,

is but a meadow flower one can no longer find!

And what’s eternal not one man would contemplate!

For the original poem, go to here.

A poem by the Swedish writer Verner von Heidenstam (1859-1940)

Vid vägens slut

Vis, o människa, det blir du först

när du hinner till de aftonsvala

höjders topp, där jorden overskådas.

Konung, vänd dig om vid vägens slut,

vila där en stund och se tillbaka!

Allt förklaras där och allt försonas,

och din ungdoms riken hägra åter,

strödda än med ljus och morgondagg.

At the ending of the path

Wise, oh human creature, you’ll first be

when you gain the lofty summit in its

evening coolness, with the earth spread out below.

King, turn round at the ending of the path,

rest there a while and look behind you!

All is explained there, all is reconciled,

and once more your youth’s realms appear to shimmer,

still strewn with early light and morning dew.

Poem by the Swedish poet Artur Lundkvist

The magpie

my gusty temperament’s bird,

flies whirling like a helicopter,

a ball of wings in the wind.

The magpie, merry widow, laughing

despite her unprovided for young, laughing

at thefts she’s committed and thefts she is planning.

The birch tree’s own black-and-white bird,

at home even in trees that stand black in snow.

Basketless picker of autumn’s rowanberries,

with breast steel-shimmering as a frost-clear winter sky.

Farms though she loves even more than the forest,

flies through chimney smoke reeking of fried bacon,

picks up a safety pin thrown out with the baby’s

bathwater,

sits on the wooden pump listening to the separator in

the kitchen.

The magpie, cunning lass with wagging tail,

never completely young and inexperienced,

more like a gipsy girl with a silver coin in her ear,

easily seduced in late-winter’s last hay

when her feet are cold from the rain.

Though never a surly old crone like the crow

or hoarse like the raven, the roving horsedealer,

with a knife inside his coat and chewing his backy.

No, most akin to the poor vicarage miss

that dances on the ice

in spite of her tattered gloves.

The magpie with bundle of twigs and squeaky milk churn,

clad in blown-away egg-white, dipped in tar from the drainpipes,

where she whets her beak against the grindstone

and laughingly mocks young boys that climb

trees.


To see the original, go to here.

Another song from 'Fridas Visor' by the Swedish writer Birger Sjöberg

Freda spring-cleaning

(Among the trees in Freda’s father’s patch of garden he observes outside the windows, during a spring lunch break, how Freda, who has been granted time off to do the spring-cleaning, is busily on the move about the house. ---Internal hymn of love.)

Something sweet and angel-like for certain

gleams round Frieda’s head, you must admit!

More so, when behind spring’s flowery curtain

twinkle-toed I see her lightly flit!

She takes no resounding strides but nicely

tripping steps like reeds that swish when swung;

And yet Frieda does not stand precisely

on our social ladder’s highest rung.

How while working with such dedication

she remains so practical and calm,

Science must seek a cogent explanation

since I’m left quite tongue-tied by her charm.

Runs about with pail where water trembles

dries the crystals round the lamp’s thick band.

Flower or butterfly though she resembles,

or a wave that gleams on silver sand.

Swiftly is her ready cloth in motion,

while she breathes on waiting window-pane,

then her nimble hands without commotion

rub the copper pitcher bright again.

Every part of ‘Charles XII’s obsequies’

she now cleans to Boston’s cheerful airs.

How the halbadiers their king’s exequies

would forget were her hand close to theirs!

While spring breezes quiverings are raising

in the rooftop phone wires where they swarm,

the tall bureau’s china cat is gazing

in deep thought at Frieda’s bustling form.

Now my angel’s light hand wields a hammer,

this embroidery tacks to the wall:

‘Leave beneath the threshold thoughts’ high clamour

and your hat and stick out in the hall.’

Free from bitterness at what fate’s offered,

I do yet affirm with love-filled voice,

though the Alderman’s his daughter proffered,

Frieda would still be my certain choice.

Should my master with his daughter pair me:

‘Take Astrea as your future bride,’

I’d still hasten back to Frieda, where she

chases moths that in the curtains hide.

Common wind makes window panes start tinkling,

common dust around her ankles flit,

and yet something angel-like is twinkling

round fair Frieda’s head, you must admit!

Midst the pails and stools she moves so nicely,

with a queenly air her cloth is wrung.

And yet Frieda does not stand precisely

on our social ladder’s highest rung.

To see the original, go to here.

Poem by the Dutch writer Hester Knibbe

Search Expedition

Tonight wandered through a city

so done in as a body with broken

ribs and a heart laid bare. Searched

for you there with buns in my pocket, searched

for a sigh, some movement in dismantled

streets and alleys. Tonight

a moment not knowing your lair

searched for you with hope in my bones.

But no matter how much I tugged at you

with my voice and my eyes, fragments of wall

kept on growing around you, cellars seemed

to have crept on you, I stayed alone

with those buns in my pocket

just calling and walking.

For this and two other Knibbe translations, go to here

The plot thickens! Original text of 'The first time...'

 

So now there are three versions!

A real classic this one - a poem from 'Fridas Visor' by the Swedish writer Birger Sjöberg (1885-1929)

The first time...

The first time that I saw you it was a summer’s day

one morning when the sun was shining bright,

and all the meadow’s flowers, so varied in display,

in pairs stood bowing in its warming light.

So gentle was the morning breeze, and at the shore but slightly

a loving wavelet rippled round a shell the sand held tightly.

The first time that I saw you it was a summer’s day

the first time that I held your hand so lightly.

The first time that I saw you the sky was all ablaze,

so dazzling as the finely feathered swan.

There came then from the forest, the green-fringed forest’s haze,

a chorusing of birds in joyful song.

There trilled a song from high above whose beauty none could equal,

it was the tiny grey-fledged lark, as hard to glimpse as gleeful.

The first time that I saw you, the sky was all ablaze,

so dazzling and intense though without sequel.

And therefore when I see you, though it be winter's day,

with snowdrifts lying glittering and cold,

I still hear larks' quick trilling, the summer winds that stray

and spring's keen urge to even so unfold.

I still sense that from downy beds green plants would be advancing

with cornflower and with cloverleaf all lovers' joy enhancing,

that rays of summer sunshine upon your features play,

which softly blush in radiance entrancing.

This is from the first of two books that are a gentle pastiche of provincial town life. To see the original, go to the Projekt Runeberg site here. There is another version of line 20, with 'vågens brus' (=the sound of the waves) instead of 'vårens frus', even in poetry anthologies, but 'vårens frus' (= the urge of spring to burst forth) seems more logical in view of the following two lines.

There are many YouTube recordings, but the version to download is by Ingvar Wixell, originally recorded in the early 1970s. It is available on iTunes 'Fridas Visor & Evert Taube'.

A poem by the Swedish poet Gunnar Ekelöf (1907-68)

Poetik

Det är till tystnaden du skall lyssna

tystnaden bakom apostroferingar, allusioner

tystnaden i retoriken

eller i det så kallade formellt fulländade

Detta är sökandet efter ett meningslöst

i det meningsfulla

och omvänt

Och allt vad jag så konstfullt söker dikta

är kontrastvis någonting konstlöst

och hela fyllnaden tom

Vad jag har skrivit

är skrivet mellan raderna

Poetics

It is the silence you’re to listen to

the silence behind quotation marks, allusions

the silence in the rhetoric

or in the so-called formally accomplished

This is the search for what’s meaningless

in the meaningful

and vice versa

And all that I artfully seek to compose

is by way of contrast something artless

and the whole fullness empty

What I have written

is written between the lines

Another sonnet from the collection 'mannen utan väg' by the Swedish poet Erik Lindegren

XXV

the faithful bee hums for the shrivelled rose

the rabid dog drinks from the sunken storm’s throat

and the flying dutchman hauls his bride on board

so as to bury himself in her fury-cut hair

at the lists the lance of the black knight grows

and in the air the tragic mask of the charwoman glitters

in the dandelion pasture even the catchfly’s tar-bubbles burst

and the butterflies’ blinkers now say their final prayer

in the skies desert-singed clouds stack from verandahs

and the pulse’s tambourine makes the virginia creeper tremble

a taboo summer squirms uneasily on crystal-clear noes

the jaws of the tiger lily sink softly into the past

from the trailer of time hurrahs are flung out at death

dully garrisons rest beneath the rain’s silent leaps