No Man's Land

by Pia Tafdrup

My grey cat vanishes,

or has it acquired a new life

   at Nivå Brickworks?

At night I hear it calling…

Search for it, search again the next day.

Live in a vacuum, while my father

looks for another farm,

but learn in sun and dust to cycle,

shoot myself forward like a mainspring,

   ever further out

on Vibevej, along the residential gardens.

Lilacs, laburnums,

an olfactory orgy to sweep past.

Shall I vanish like the cat,

for there is no one to play with,

   and over the summer

I lose

    tooth after tooth in my hollowed hand.

When my mother takes an afternoon nap

with no hands on the clock 

the first one falls out,

   white,

but leaving

      a bloody hole

the tongue’s tip wants to drill down into

– instead of calling, speaking.

Taste of iron in the mouth. Blood words.

Cave language. Tongue pit.

A tooth

   white

as a daisy growing in the grass

in the garden of the house we rent

   and under whose roof my mother in the rain

now and then sings

                      "Solitude Road".

In the house with creaky stairs

and smells of strangers

   there is a studio

we may not enter, my sister and I,

   there I seek refuge –

sit for hours on the floor, contemplate

the radiant pictures’

                  vanishing grey.

translated from Danish by David McDuff