Two Poems

By Pia Tafdrup

MYSTERIOUS BRIDGE


With my lipstick
a poet from Cyprus is reading
her poems in Turkish.
A  woman asking
to borrow my lipstick
is one second
more overarching of borders
than driving from one country
  to another.
My lipstick now speaks
on her lips.
Suddenly I'm one kiss closer to
   her language.
With my lipstick
she is reading
a poem about a man
who is like a pendulum.
He sways        incessantly
between two women.
That could have been
   my life
my lipstick was reading poems about.
An arrow
would have kissed
the back of his neck.



THE ROAD ANYONE CAN GO


I go led by sleepless nerve paths
  in front of my shadow,
traverse dense traffic, find
a passable path
go right, left,
cross bridges over streams
and fords,
reach a track I want to follow.
The straight path is not
  the shortest one.
The air is chilly and raw, the landscape
is lit by the earliest morning sun,
cold and heat proliferate
at once.
Now is the time, I go
lured by dreams
  where birds migrate.
Notice a sharp odour of plants
that grew once, 
hear sounds purring
of before.
   What does the road want of me?
Look out across the vast terrain
with its network of tracks and scents. 
Fear
is always there,
          like this a pupil opens.
The road changes pace, keeps me awake -
I branch, collect myself
mark
on the map of the future
  a route
bound for uncertainty.

from Trækfuglens kompas, 2010

translated from Danish by David McDuff

Landing

Pia Tafdrup's recently-published collection Trækfuglens kompas (Gyldendal) is part of a Danish government-sponsored project which aims to provide a series of artworks along the route of the so-called "Hærvejen" - the old Military Road that links Southern Jutland with Northern Germany. The project is primarily intended to boost tourism in the district, and the participants also include well-known Danish painters, composers, sculptors and others working in the field of the arts.

Although the theme of Trækfuglens kompas is that of travel, and most of the poems relate to this in one way or another, the book's real focus is on discovery - both of oneself and of the world, with a view to confirmation and affirmation. While the subjects of the poems range far and wide - from the experience of international airports to a "global spring-cleaning day" in Sierra Leone and Gaza, and from the poet's experience of losing personal possessions while traveling to that of her parents in flight from the Nazis in wartime Denmark - the emphasis is always on the return, the homecoming. The following poem is perhaps characteristic of the whole collection (my tr.):

LANDING

My body has landed,
it has set a period to the journey.
And the nervous system
which had adapted 
to other latitudes,
is accustoming itself to the usual again.
My body has landed,
the luggage is there,
               but the soul
is apparently doing fine in New Delhi
among birds and reflected light,
   it has not returned.
It sees dogs playing in the dust, sees
women in colorful saris and sandals
go swaying
with pyramids of fruit
in baskets on their heads.
It listens to young women chirping
like birds in a bush, it listens
and understands immediately
  without knowing the words.
My body has arrived
at its own home,
has jockeyed the suitcase up the stairs
and unlocked the front door.
It had no problem
finding its way back
to the cold moonlit nights
                    but the soul
still sits under a tree watching
a little girl fan away the flies,
while she plays with her chair in the grass
in a park
where it’s warm and quiet
   and the sun is low.
I return
with wide-awake eyes to see
my own world again, 
  soon the soul will be here, too.