Thursday, 7 January 2010

Two poems

by Susanne Jorn

Peace

The snow falls
softly, softly tonight.

I stand in the middle of
Kongens Nytorv
in Copenhagen.

Sparkling snowflakes,
twinkling snowflakes:

Snow me into my stars.


*

- - -

Worry is blackest
Sorrow, whitest.

Happiness is purple.
Unhappiness, grey.

Hope is primordial yellow.
Revenge, blood-red.

Non-violence is turquoise.
Violence, pale orange.

Lies are green.
Truth, violet.

Prose is pink.
Poetry, blue.

Death is colourless –
Life, a many-coloured painting.

(from Med et halvt øje  [With Half An Eye], Forlaget Sohn, 2006)
translated from Danish by David McDuff
NB read Lev Hrytsyuk's Ukrainian translation of the second poem here.

2 comments:

Лев Грицюк | Lev Hrytsyuk said...

I did my own Ukrainian translation of the last poem (from English): http://levhrytsyuk.blogspot.com/2010/01/blog-post_07.html. Thank you for the post! :-)

David McDuff said...

Я також дякую Вам, Лев! :-)