Norway International

The current edition of Poetry International's website has work by Norwegian poets Monica Aasprong, Torgeir Rebolledo Pedersen (some of his poems are also in my translations) and Tone Hødnebø on its front page. The Norwegian PIW site, where all the material should be accessible after this week, is here.

Pedro Carmona-Alvarez

My translations of poems by the Norwegian-Chilean poet Pedro Carmona-Alvarez are on the site of Poetry International Web.

10 poems

by Rune Christiansen

  

A sheet of paper lit up by memory

But still – the poem's patient independence, and the shallow depths near heaven, a phrase I have from Ekelöf (‘As in the ballad’ published 10 October 1964), perhaps simply to remind myself that the draught from the open kitchen window, and the thin, cold drizzle, snowflakes almost, set the scene for an awkward perspective that evening. The year was 2003. How would it go with us?

  And on the grey respatex table, next to a black dice, lay the photograph of father, a picture that had once been stapled to a public document unknown to me. I noted that we did not resemble each other, but when I turned the face towards the twilight I found my way home all the same.

Lukas 9

A day of frozen lakes, in February the sun reigns only in shy glints, and the silence is on its way like space ships passing in the night. Soon it will snow, as in northern Japan, soon we shall be in the prime of sleep, and the universe will not weigh us down any longer. When I see you at a distance, on a white slope, I think: all that you take from me you will receive, and all that I borrow from you, you will inherit back.

 

Five allegorical sketches

The escalators down to the subway lead the shadows ambiguously home. In the absence of other gods, we eagerly greet the chill draught from the trains.

*

In Poems Around Zero Karl Vennberg wrote: "Someone, perhaps you, seems to be taking a rest, / though in great unrest," and then "Someone, perhaps myself, raises an arm / as against a delayed attack”, and elsewhere: "For a moment to stand there outside / and avoid recognizing oneself!"

*

We played soccer on a little patch of land, used an empty water bottle and a jacket as goal. I thought of all the years that had gone. When darkness came, we continued for another hour.

*

The two boys shivering in the rain will soon themselves turn into rain.

*

One no longer sees oneself as a child in one’s childhood.

 

The working class arrives in Paradise

1. It is 1975, I am twelve, I am travelling by train, I have planned to go to The Elysian Fields, or to Dalarö.

2. Oh, how I have missed surrendering myself to the warmth. Where are you from? a girl asks. It’s so bright around you.

3. Everything was in motion even though there was no wind.

4. They say that peace came, and that it was not expected. How did that happen?

5. I never said "dad" after I turned ten, nor "father" either, I referred to him by name, or I addressed him directly with a "you".

6. What remains? Only vague images of things that happened all too fast.

7. "Longing" is reminiscent of "long ago".

 

Julien Gracq (July 27, 1910 - December 22, 2007)

A boy does not speak the same language as a rabbit or a deer. An airport does not cry for help as a girl can cry for help. "At the bottom of the garden" does not mean "she is shaking with fever," but is from the same linguistic source. The one who says "let’s prune these branches" probably understands the one who talks about time as an exhausting preparation. The tablecloth is being stained while we discuss. Of course we agree about chestnuts, rain, farewells – for what we understand, what we grasp, is our leavings.  

 

The lonely clouds blow across the sky

Fatigue at a window overlooking a rain-soaked park, you lean out panting after the night's labour, the notebook with its scribbles lies open in the frame, the little cactus has capsized, and the clouds – they are gliding all over the public sector.

 

St. Nobody

Down in the street two young girls are kicking a football against a container, and so they set reality in motion, just as you once set love in motion in a hotel room in a city without memory.

  We don’t live long, we are teenagers, and then it is winter. But if we are lucky we shall meet again in another life, preferably on the coast, preferably in November, the reunion is pure experience – we both stand still in the snow with our own understanding.

 

I have always been here before

One morning you move without understanding poetry, in the light there is no room, only thin dust, cold in the corners. Life arrives with its tulips, the scorch-marks of New Year's rockets in the snow make you nostalgic. But what serves you? What is in your best interest? In a photograph taken in Turku in 1947 a grey horse is crossing a bridge. But what if this poem were to end like this: a boy leaves a girl with a certain melancholy – everything was new to them that night, they were disappointed.

 

Loneliness mistaken for a clear day

The snow-covered mountains in the distance are reminiscent of distant, snow-covered mountains, or capitalism, capitalism engulfed by death (can it be said so simply?).

You wait in a white car, the sun floods over the front windscreen and makes the glass soft, in the glove compartment – a postcard:

             VI. Winterkampfspiele, Garmisch-Partenkirchen 1941

No matter: from a great height the blue sky resembles any old desolate expanse.

  

Morton Feldman (12 January 1926 - 3 September 1987)

Why patterns? A distinct and compliant echo? Or is it rather a matter of a patiently extended waiting? Or drops that hesitate in the encounter with themselves? Of course it is drops, drops as we have forgotten them – slow and obvious, yes, obvious, for after all no one has ever said: I leave death to those who need it, but Basho mentions the cold rain.

translated from Norwegian by David McDuff

Poem

Five allegorical sketches

by Rune Christiansen

The escalators down to the subway lead the shadows ambiguously home. In the absence of other gods, we eagerly greet the chill draught from the trains.

*

In Poems Around Zero Karl Vennberg wrote: "Someone, perhaps you, seems to be taking a rest, / though in great unrest," and then "Someone, perhaps myself, raises an arm / as against a delayed attack”, and elsewhere: "For a moment to stand there outside / and avoid recognizing oneself!"

*

We played soccer on a little piece of land, used an empty water bottle and a jacket as goal. I thought of all the years that had gone. When darkness came, we continued for another hour.

*

The two boys shivering in the rain will soon themselves turn into rain.

*

One no longer sees oneself as a child in one’s childhood.


translated from Norwegian by David McDuff

Poems - 4

By Morten Øen

this is how I tell you about us
all over again:
this is how I tell you about us. About summer heat or valley floor. The outbreak
of darkness

as Horizon
as Suggested =

your room. Your view

this is how one life lengthens the next. Otherwise it is

sequence:
voices to tell in

and so this is how it has become, I think

there is daylight here (or as close to it as one can get)
dream and hour

*

I rattle off The Sleepless Nights. Your reality as
more desirable than mine

the same dead end you regret

and when you are here, why point defencelessly backward

this under the trees
the white pavilion
what ploughed furrows. What a place

what a place

how much can you remember

once I was tall and comely like you
thought as bird/hand

we read our past
from earth to person. No context. All the same

read yourself into this. Once I was almost like you.

*

dust-yellow plains or forest
impending choice where journey is transfer that cannot be communicated
or presented

stone is not Stone As Burden
writing not approached

burnt paper, salt
earth in this fading light

land without us

translated from Norwegian by David McDuff

Poems - 1
Poems - 2
Poems - 3

Poems - 3

By Morten Øen


as streetlamps are reflected in water the sky above us is first the
one, then the other

summer then rain. The pavements’ curves. Direction which accessible
now

added as real is maybe time sign. This is my name

like: Are swallows lonely
or: This is a flower made of paper

then you make it difficult again

day 1: Enrichment. You are a word
so it tears and tears. My hand against another’s, just images
cheek. Mist. 8 mm.

word against word, or

all this just because a romantic setback is exactly
like Old Friends or Child

just as text emerges from text so sound too is a string

we are 12 years old. The child is a stranger’s

*

seen in relation to the landscape’s size there are not many places
I have been. No one misses me

not the illusions, but ear-splitting silence is used
as in four three four

one colours. One sits and one stays sitting. One thinks that something is lacking…

translated from Norwegian by David McDuff

Poems - 1
Poems - 2

Poems - 2

By Morten Øen


Too close to the sun one evening as though it is immortal we are
ruin’s attractions, unstoppable like the past, a
lacking call for mercy, or on inborn frequencies of
skill; diverging and processed by others, shaped like
metal, lacking ardour of life or death

*

tears hearts in sleep
in realities’ attack of intimacy, the spread of city darkness, the steel
of buildings

…circle and you are out of position. That fundamental vagueness you
explain yourself with, this you have me in

*
I am not the lover you asked for, that remorse-light gaze
through the winter mirror of the city light, or softer cries muted year
by year

but like the darkness I yearn into you, gather and
sink just as continuously as ill-timed. As elaborate as
the difference between born and dead.

*
A blue jug filled with water against the light’s heat…
movement in the book’s shoulder
an outline in your breasts, you who are reading, what do you read in this, you
who are her, are you not here

Then you write yourself in all the same
Then we write ourselves in
Then we write ourselves in equally

and it is summer

you consider yourself a visionary
you consider yourself

a different form. A life no one has anything against, that doesn’t arise
without further ado

and why this now, so precarious
why these deficiencies in a mirror for eyes

there is something of us here, and in order to confuse
I shut you out

there are songs for lost and lonely. Nothing
forsaken is forsaken

translated from Norwegian by David McDuff

Poems - 1

Poems - 1

by Morten Øen

overcome I build myths, time’s crystal wave, diverse
days’ correctness, the dream of inside, low sun, the feeling of
past, like structural elements, loved forth and earlier
seen: Towers of stone and glass. Oceans to disappear in. Forests against
oblivion

I build bridges, corners of the world, all material things. My
mirror-image is: blue eyes, a wrapped-up minute, ceded warmth, and I
rise like a survivor who almost lost his chance
and you say we are bodies, breathing machines, bought time. Floating
falling. misleading

*

it is I or the darkness. Experimentally meet over deeper seas
the flight you catch me at time after time

and from the mouth: Like that you lose sleep, sun, loss, but are more intensely
loved

it is here it bleeds. Ineffective in this undone attempt
obeying like neutralities, and hidden in everything that is physical

*

other evidence exists. Others exist
and are granted to you

inexhaustible body
sand
possible crossing
from lifelessness to reflection
and human
signs

*

I think: the Ocean’s thermohaline circulation
the weight of the trees on the forest floor

direct answers, temporary solutions

that in this swarm nothing is lost
nothing is forgotten

that from the gate to the stone stairway
it is your back that convinces

several pictures from the same time


translated from Norwegian by David McDuff