Poem from 'Palimpsest' (2008) by the Danish writer Klaus Høeck

STANDING NUDE

(1921)

carved out of pali

sander mahogany or

teak which were the pre

ferred types of wood back

then – long live the twenties which

by the way i know

absolutely bug

ger all about but i re

ly on art which in

brief glimpses shows us

much more of the truth than his

tory ever does

To see Archipenko's sculpture, go to here.

Evert Taube's morning song at Baggensfjärden

Morning song at Baggensfjärden

Now leaves are rustling, branches shake

Now comes a breeze, now comes a breeze!

We catch between bent trees a glimpse of Baggensfjärden

Now rocks are creaking, rushes stretched

In morning mist, in morning mist

So pristine, dredged in dew, aroused from worldly slumber

Its arms by ridge on ridge,

Its lap by sea on sea

Now skywards open –

Sinister and dark is still the wave’s deep grave

The surface gleams though

In sun’s bright joyous light

The sea-gull swims in its snow-white garb

Towards the dusky shore

But past the darkened ridge,

Now dredged in gold, in lightened space

A host of clouds is hustled by unknown wind

To place unknown:

It’s daybreak

To see a photograph of Baggensfjärden, go to here.
There is a video of Sven-Bertil Taube singing the song on the Internet.
But try his earlier recorded version on Sven-Bertil Taube sjunger Evert Taube.

Poem from Klaus Høeck's collection Palimpsest

 

THE RIBBON OF EXTREMES

(1932)

throughout my entire

production runs a ribbon

of incomprehen

sibility (like

a milky way) a ribbon

of paradoxes

a thin möbius

strip that binds words and senten

ces and images

together into

the whole that makes the poems

understandable

The title refers to a painting by Yves Tanguy. To see the painting, go to here

Dèr Mouw on 'la bête d'amour'

How tender a young girl! So sweetly shy,

so childlike! And twice graceful, since she’s fair.

Her mind’s kept healthy too – she reads with care,

her mother says, the good books I supply.

She blushes at a gentleman’s salute,

and fears his terrier’s antics aren’t quite sound

with her Alsatian, two legs off the ground,

oh dear me, no! what an unseemly brute!

Louys displeases her, she finds far finer

‘der herrlichste von Allen’, and H. Heine.

She hates twice over every pert cocotte,

adores Don Juan and laughs at Don Quijote:

apparent Artemis, there lurks for sure

yearning, demonic, la bête d’amour.

Dèr Mouw on the subject of pain

God’s said to make the soul divine through pain?

None but a fool or mocker might so think:

who uses night to bleach what’s black as ink,

the impure with sticky pitch makes white again?

No, pain ennobles no one: pain turns hard.

A stinking dung-fly I became that feeds

on filth and muck, that mockingly misreads,

defiles what’s finest in the human heart.

My yearning eyes hunt misery as food,

prey hungrily on every face they see

where painful laugh is grimly etched for good

and I think eagerly: ‘Not only me!’

And, flesh-fly now, pain pierces me, for I

could just as well have been a butterfly.

Klaus Høeck: 'past' from 'LIVE'

                  past

                  no – that’s not correct

i must take back what i have

                  said gunderslev skov

                  is even more beau

tiful is the most beauti

                  ful in the country

                  here where a ship of

stone has stranded in a huge

                  foundering between

                  two eternities

washed up in the surf of net

                  tles under an oak

                  please stop oh wheel at

this outcrop of the past – i

                   say to my bike which

                  i get off and then

clamber aboard the shipwreck

                  the time amongst haw

                  thorn and groundsel con

vinced of interdependence

                  via stones and years

                  connected to death

only separated by

                  a single second

                  no poem is written

on a blank sheet of paper

                  but on other writ

                  ing it partly e

rases and partly intens

                  ifies no story

                  comes solely out of

itself but from tradition –

                  i’m literally

                  standing on histor

ic ground writing on a

                  prehistoric find

KH is referring to the dolmen found in the wood at Gunderslev that was visited by N.F.S. Grundtvig in 1808. After his visit, Grundtvig wrote a poem about the dolmen. You can see how it looked in 1857 and looks now by going here.
 

One more from 'Live' by Klaus Høeck

                  art

                  and the stage is set

this time in gammel estrup

                  without any scen

                  ery or other

trappings just like in real

                  ity and what then

                  is the difference

nothing apart from the split

                  second that separ

                  ates art and life like

an atom of infini

                  ty in the moment

                  the stage is set once

again and there we sit down

                  in the banqueting

                  hall without full-bot

tomed wigs and renaissance

                  costumes just like an

                  attentive audi

ence that is listening a

                  cross the dark abyss

                  of the centuries

like an atom of fini

                  tude in the moment

                  the stage is set for

the third time and holberg is

                  being played as u

                  sual – only during

the intervals is it  poss

                  ible to tread these

                  boards on which the com

edy is being enact

                  ed or when it is

                  all over and there

is no longer any stage

                  that can be trodden

Dèr Mouw - painting with words again!

 

Through village church’s window pane the beech

draws shadows on lit curtain’s meagre width;

next to the casing through two bright-blue slits

parallel yellow bars skim through each breach.

And on the far wall glaring sunshine lies,

sliced by thin lines to squares that brightly sprawl:

upwards round shadows creep, only to fall

quite suddenly, as if they are huge flies.

Old men and women in the paupers’ pew,

hands folded, keep the vicar well in view:

he talks of bliss that’s found in Better Lands.

In turn, through glittering holes midst beech-tree leaves

the eternal sun strews tiny golden seeds

over what now are resting, worn out hands.

The diagonal light is also a strong feature in the painting (three versions) by Charles de Groux in his ‘Le banc des pauvres’. To see a version of the work, go to here.

Another poem from Klaus Høeck's 'Live'

                  stone

                  i admit it it’s

completely way out to drive

                  all the way out to

                  hampen to write this

poem – but that’s what i’ve done

                  and now i’m standing

                  in a field where i’m

kicking at stones partly to

                  discourage festi

                  val poetry and

partly to pay my homage

                  to dr johnson

                  i scrutinise the

stones carefully how beauti

                  ful they really are

                  each one of them re

markable in some way or

                  other – one with a

                  medal ribbon di

agonally across its

                  surface another

                  with an axe blow from

the stone age finally i

                  pick up a flintstone

                  i let go of the

stone it falls to the ground – so

                  simple it is the

                  rest is twaddle a

load of codswallop or sim

                  ply stuff and nonsense

                  at best habit or

a matter of faith i get

                  into the car once

                  again and drive back

while you are reading this po

                  em as a fact now

(The expression 'ude i hampen' in danish means 'way out, far out, beyond credibility'. Opinions are divided as to its origin (see here). but it is a location slap bang in the middle of Jutland, and Klaus Høeck visits all sorts of places in Denmark in the course of his latest collection.)

Poem by the Danish writer Christine Brahe, dated 1602

 

Wi saais nu i Guds urtebed,

I Guds kiere børns gaarde,

I Guds ager leggis wi hans Sæd.

Huile om vinteren hin haarde:

Naar vaaren kommer oc solen skin,

Opuoxe wi met herlighed fin,

De deilige fruct,

Til deilige fruct oc grøde.

In God’s rich soil our bed is made,

In God’s dear children’s garden,

In God’s field we his seed are laid

To rest when frosts all harden:

When spring comes and the sun does shine.

We’ll grow magnificent and fine,

The wondrous fruit,

To wondrous fruit and harvest.