They have drunk death.

Their word was eternal: 'Amen!'

Their faithful God

in the hard night bound their garland of honour.

Its name is more than joy.

Its name is life's deep courage.

They have won. They rest. How their crowns shine.

May we endure. See, life is not long.

May we remember the rest. May we remember the crown.

May we remember the watchword.

In the safety of a barren sky

is our last dwelling prepared and our secure stronghold.

Its name is greater than joy.

Its name is life's deep courage.

LEARN TO BE SILENT

Each night on earth is full of pain.

Heart, learn to be silent.

The hard souls, hard shields

reflect light from the home of the stars.

Your lament makes you weaker.

Heart, learn to be silent.

Only silence heals, silence hardens,

untouchedly chaste and guiltlessly true.

You seek suffering's ardent life!

Heart, learn to be silent.

By wounds and fever no one is made strong.

Bright as steel is heaven's stronghold.

THE INVISIBLE THINGS

I

You faithful things

that would my faith desire,

With you I forget

that I hold people dear.

You things secure.

before you I can fall in peace,

but mists and dew

are all friendship's promises.

You strong things,

that have no body and no soul,

Oh, make for me with you

the safest bed of all.

II

And yet - you, my friend,

the things you gave to me.

Your beauty, it is in them.

Else none in them would be.

You became my heavy thirst

for worlds of white relief,

You became the vision cool

that steels me to all grief.

You glimpse of distant goals,

that stretch your wing so free,

my way is a way to you.

Else none in them would be.

TO SLEEP

The night's baptism of the deep,

you, in whose rivers

the spirit thinks it strokes against

the sea that is called death -

it is life's sea he touches, 

life's to-be-feared

beyond...

Pour your trance's riddle!

Slowly I step out

into the subterranean

misty water

that which unseen washes

the roots of our daily lives,

that which carries

of foam of our daily lives -

that from whose darkness

raised itself, woken,

too deep for what thought knows,

the body's fine, venerable,

immense, immense magnificence.

Pour your trance's riddle,

wash from my spirit

the past day's faded

dust and residue!

Death, who give life,

let me plunge again

into the light, life-renewed!

NEW WAYS

Here new ways go.

Quietly let us fare.

Come, let us seek

a new flower, and fair.

Throw away what we possess!

Everything attained, complete

lifelessly oppresses us,

not worthy of dream, song and deed.

Life is that which awaits,

what one cannot know of, or speak...

Come, let us forget!

New things and fair let us seek!

UNSCATHED

Unscathed from smoke and fire

goes he that wills a work.

Listen, o spirit, adventurous one,

listen well and mark!

Wild-winged butterfly,

every bloom is yours.

Unpunished you stepped in

to death's bitter flowers,

flit childishly out of depths

where your need was most,

innocent and pure as fire

with your future-thirst.

laughing gently, gently

- for what way is worth tears? -

see life enticing

as discovery's voyage nears.

Without shame, without guilt

you weigh evil, you weigh good.

All that you sought and all that you found

were merely steps to you -

steps that led to deeds.

Listen, o my spirit, listen and mark!

Unscathed from smoke and fire

goes he that wills a work.

SPRING SONG

In springtime, in sprouting time,

the seed its shell destroys,

and rye becomes rye and pine becomes pine

in freedom without choice.

A thrill of voluptuousness

passes through body and soul -

that I am I, necessarily I -

a sprout that's come up whole,

a spring shoot whose growing power

I scarce envision yet -

but the stem's sap of bitter taste,

with pleasure I know it.

Then begone , all my cowardice!

To my future I belong.

I take the right to grow now

as my roots will, and as strong.

THE STARS' SOLACE

 I asked a star last night

- far away, where no one lives, a light -:

'Whom do you light, strange star?

You move so large and bright.'

It made my pity grow mute,

when she looked with her starry gaze,

'I light a night eternal,

I light a lifeless space.

My light is a flower that withers

in the skies' late autumn, rough.

That light is all my solace.

That light is solace enough.'

EVENING STILLNESS

Feel how near Reality dwells.

She breathes near here

on evenings with no wind.

Perhaps when no one looks, she shows herself,

The sun glides over rock and grass.

In her silent play

life's spirit is concealed.

Never as this evening was he so close.

I have met a stranger with silent lips.

If I had reached out my hand

I would have brushed his soul,

as we passed each other with timid steps.

VICTORY

Victory, victory has no voice,

no rushing sound of delight.

Are there such simple and even roads

Under such soberly sparing light?

Victory, victory has no hue.

Against his gaze splendour seems thin.

Quiet and pale in his halo pale

he glides home out of falsehood and din.

Victory, victory is seldom seen,

moves past like a spirit-guest.

Blessed are those whom his clear form

awaits with light at death's feast.

THE CHILD

To the rock Prometheus lay bound.

A child went out in the early morning hour.

'Stop, child, and here behold

man's friend bound in iron

for all the good he did!'

But the child, frightened

by the words' greatness, the eyes' defiance,

crept past with a prayer to Zeus

away to gentlest games.  - -

I would follow you silently, where you go.

The wise and the children, they play their way to

that which in heaven is hid.

THE SPRING WATER

A spring water is justice,

clear and colourless.

A scarce-perceptible and strange

fine taste it has.

But when wine is to be had,

such drink is so poor.

Nothing but water is the spring.

Yet I yearn for it there.

Nothing but water is justice,

nothing much to attain -

too close, too hard to love,

a bitter drink to drain.

Lord, give me justice,

give my soul its peer!

Lord, give me water,

colourless and clear!

YOU SHALL THANK

You shall thank your gods,

if they force you to go

where you have no footprints

to trust to.

You shall thank your gods,

if all shame on you they pin.

You must seek refuge

a little further in.

What the whole world condemns

sometimes manages quite well.

Outlaws were many

who gained their own soul.

He who is forced to wild wood

looks on all with new sight,

and he tastes with gratitude

life's bread and salt.

You shall thank your gods,

when your shell they break.

Reality and kernel

the sole choice you can make.

GRANDFATHER

I have seen Grandfather in the summer night's light,

alone in the night's clover-scent.

By the well of the farm

he stood bowed,

and sharpened the harvesters' scythes.

Like a fading shadow so grey,

as old he as the farm,

he seemed yet to live as living a life as it.

His fragile song I will not forget.

'O masterful father in the farm,

to grandfather you are nought but a boy.

I am the first who turned your earth.

When the plough strives in the furrow,

do you remember me then?

In times beyond memory

I began, from stones heaved aside,

to raise the cairn that marks the land's limit.

For a thousand years

I have built it and built with all of you who built,

held the plough's shaft with all you who ploughed.

I have a share in your work,

have a right to demand.

You know well what it is:

that the holy seed shall grow

constantly, constantly

here on those fields where I

for the first time sowed it.'

SOME HEARTS ARE TREASURES

Some hearts are treasures

that never can be done.

Their owners strew them generously

out in streams of sun.

Gratefully we take

the gift in cautious hand.

Hail and happy, blessed one,

who handles gold like sand!

Some hearts are fires

that burn deep below.

In coldest night thrown there

a reflection on the snow.

Enchanted thus, no one

in constant longing burns

as he that sees that shimmer one night

and forth to the fire yearns.

TONIGHT THE HEAVEN HAS NO GARB

Tonight the heaven has no garb.

He shivers naked.

And never saw I yet his gaze

so all-too waking.

Say, when you fall asleep tonight:

A day is won.

On the road where one loses all

a rest's begun.   

Then you will live from day to day

and lose, lose fast,

and yet desire still to remain

until the last.

Then you will find life strong,

if you can burn.

Then will each loss become a gain -

for you shall turn

ever further towards that ground of life

that gave you birth,

and beyond all dreams' deceit

the cause is there -

until in the hour of your greatest loss

your soul, burned down,

goes to the place of extinguished lights.

A day is won.

THE WANDERER

Tell me, nymph from Knowledge's wells,

are there things to show to me here?

Dizziness seizes me, laughter and terror.

The air has paths that bear!

Alone with you, you eagle-eyed one,

I wander far, so far ascend,

frozen roads, chiming roads

without a goal or end.

All the holy days of love

their evening and aloneness know.

Faithful wait in the evening light

you that search and know.

All that I meet I will leave again.

Nymph, you heal burning woe.

Chiming roads, chiming roads

happy with you I will go.

Follow me hence through life's days,

teach me to say at darkness' door:

'Nothing I knew, little know I -

yet it is more than before!'

WISH

Oh let me live aright,

and rightly die some day,

so that I touch reality

in evil as in good.

And let me be still

and what I see revere.

so that this may be this

and nothing more.

If of all life's long course

a single day were left,

then I would seek the fairest

that lives on earth possess.

The fairest thing there is on earth

is only honesty,

but it alone makes life to life

and to reality.

So is the wide world

a dew-cup's petal here.

and in the bowl there rests

a drop of water clear.

That single still drop

is life's eye-apple, sure.

Oh, make me worthy to look in it!

Oh, make me pure!

TO A FRIEND

On outspread wings in the heights the eagle sails.

The air is thin where he glides, and hard to breathe.

In the mountain winter's desolate air he is lonely far.

Twilight and cold are his retinue -

his only joy

the joy of feeling himself fly on strong wings.

How high you move in the emptiest winter skies,

brave as the eagle because of a lightning will.

You abstained from striving for happiness, you chose steep

paths that frighten us weak ones.

How pale you wander,

wander with swift and resilent steps like the wind.

My world is like yours, and yet it is not like it.

Laughing, my star dances among starry riddles.

Your iron-grey joy, I love it from far in the distance.

Let me go by your side

and reach with my gaze

into your wintry world and your lightning will!

BURNING CANDLES

Now cries the night aloud in need,

with unknown dread a-quake.

Now light I here two candles straight

for eternal darkness' sake.

If the Lord's angels pass by here,

the light will call to them,

then they will hear the flames sing my prayer,

and bear it with them home.

They are warriors who go in armour of fire

with word from the Almighty's house.

Their speech has no words for harsh and sweet.

but for burning candles it has.

That is why they stand on the storm's back

between the whipping wings' din,

that is why they smile at the darkness's power

and meet the cold with disdain.

O Lord my God, O terrible God,

Your mantle's roar booms free.

I pray for flowers and pray for peace -

but give burning candles to me!

SONGS ABOUT FATE

I

Fate is a desert.

God dwells in its sand.

If you seek your Sinai

you receive his command.

Fate is a strip of land

with many stones spread.

Happy he that endures:

he shall earn bread. 

Into heaven's halls

no one goes before

he has stepped unafraid

through Fate's door.

II

You know you bear a shackle

and hear the chain rattle.

But one who hammers hard and long

Can make a shield of its metal.

You know you bear a poison.

But all death's juices

becme in a wise and careful hand

kind healing forces.

You think you bear a cross,

but it's a tool, you know.

Your life's the material. Look here, take hold,

and let the martyr go!

III

Wish for nothing that others have had:

all happens one single time.

Wish for nothing that some bard

has sung in his loveliest rhyme.

One star-bright night, when you lie awake,

Fate will knock at your door

and seek you with eyes of colour strange,

which no one spoke of before.

She fell like dew from the air,

from the bosom of space she came,

and no one, no one has met her gaze,

and no one has given her a name.

To you she has come from Nothing's land,

she has been created for you,

and no one, no one in age upon age

has kissed her lips more than you.

’SIR AND ELVES

I

’SIR AND ELVES DIVIDE THE POWER

The ’sir rode over the rainbow bridge

with frost-white weapons,

glimpsed far in the Iron Forest's darkness

the dripping monster's maw.

The swords rang and gleamed

when giants' names were heard.

The voices' echoes, the hooves' thunder

carried far into space.

The elves walked in sprouting grass

softly on supple feet.

Trees leapt into blossom when the elves stepped

lightly over twisted roots.

Earth's kingdom rejoiced,

sprouting spring came in.

the May night shone white

with elves' white skin.

’sir and elves went to sessions

and divided the power of the earth.

The ’sir sat like hewn statues,

heavy with primeval splendour.

The elves slid like shadows

- they saunter as they will -

shadows of all that does not exist

but one day perhaps will.

’sir and elves conferred

and divided the earth up thus:

to ’sir all that a hand can take

and all that a word can reach,

to ’sir all that is spoken

and all the time that flew -

to elves that which thereafter remains :

all that is namelessly new.

’sir and elves conferred

and divided the family of men:

to ’sir those who hold fast

to their fathers' inherited right,

chieftain and warrior

and every sacrificial priest

and all who pray in temples -

from east and to west.

’sir and elves conferred

and divided the race of men:

to elves those who obey blindly

a day that has not yet dawned,

all who sacrifice in the forest

and do not support the fathers' laws

and all who grow like wild trees -

all, from north to south.

Thus did they confer, and thus it was.

Thus they steer the earth's ring.

The ’sir dispose over watchwords in battle

and visible signs and things.

But the elves they control the things

that have never had a name,

and all that they have and all that they give

is the force of fertility's flame.

II

THE ELF DAGUR SINGS ABOUT FATE

In the world's tree nine days

sacrificed he hung

- so pale I never saw any,

god or man -

erect, with relentless mouth,

his ruler's hands clenched,

above the sacrifice he made

his eyelids closed.

But my mind

jumped like a snake - I cried: 'Who has done it?'

The dark voice answered, tremblingly low:

'I myself have done it.'

Little do I know of wisdom's well,

never yearned to be there.

Its lustre is black. I know a spring,

gleaming silver-white:

deep, deep near life's roots

a wave washes my mind.

No one demanded my eye as a pledge.

I drink freely in there.

Like a stream

flows my day - as though I had never heard

the strange answer I hear each night in my dreams:

'I myself have done it.'

Then the earth's blossoming spring seems to me

like dead things and dust

against him, sacrificed to himself

in the ash's whistling air.

Then my thought seeks in vain a well

that seems worthy of the feat.

a drink that must be cruelly won

with costly sacrifice.

No power

resembles theirs, who were silent, were silent and did it.

Through the darkness shines with splendour of flames:

'I myself have done it.'

The old witch spoke the truth.

'The strong,' she said one time,

'are born for gaze of lofty powers

and song of trembling man.

The more a strong one can suffer harm,

the more difficult things can he learn,

and dark Norns rejoice to see

how heavy a load a man can bear.'

Never yet

bore I a burden - and am not aware that I ought to.

But that dream, none is as proud as it:

'I myself have done it.'

III

ODIN AND RINDUR

(By means of forbidden magic Odin had won the elf-daughter Rindur ,

who according to the counsels of the Norns would give birth to

Baldur's avenger.)

 'Dark runes I carved, which no hand should carve,

I who am called chieftain in heaven's hall.

Heaven and earth are sick. Heaven and earth will break.

Myself guilt-bowed I will fall on Vigrid's slope.

Once, irrevocably, happens all that happens,

lonely, eternal, carved in stone it stands.'

   'King, one thing I know that always returns:

the earth's holy breathing, autumn and spring.'

The earth's forests murmured quietly in time's dawn,

murmur still, when the gods' power is all.

Under the spinning, under the swell of the fates

moves an engendering sea of deep crystal.

Sleep, shuttle of the Norns ! Nothing is transformed.

Worlds waken in new suns' gold.'

  'Once, irrevocably, have I already acted -

yearn to pay on Vigrid's slope my debt.'

THE TREE

When my door is shut and my lamp has gone out

and I sit in twilight's breathing wrapped,

then I feel around me move

branches, a tree's branches.

In my room where no one else lives

the tree spreads a shadow as soft as gauze.

It lives silent, it grows well,

it becomes what some unknown one thinks.

Some spirit-power, power secret made,

in the trees' hidden roots its will has laid.

I am frightened sometimes and ask in fear:

Are we so surely friends?

But it lives in calm and it grows still,

and I know not where it strives and whither it will.

It is sweet and bewitching to live so near

one whom one does not know...

THE SHIELD-MAIDEN*

I dreamed about swords last night.

I dreamed about battle last night.

I dreamed I fought by your side

armoured and strong, last night.

Lightning flashed harsh from your hand,

and the giants fell at your feet.

Our ranks closed lightly and sang

in silent darkness' threat.

I dreamed about blood last night.

I dreamed about death last night.

I dreamed I fell by your side

with a mortal wound, last night.

You marked not at all that I fell.

Earnest was your mouth.

With steady hand the shield you held,

and went your way straight forth.

I dreamed about fire last night.

I dreamed about roses last night.

I dreamed my death was fair and good.

So did I dream last night.

*In Norse, skjaldmey (Swedish skjöldmö ), an 'Amazon', a female

warrior who fought alongside men [Tr.]

The Hearths (1927

DEDICATION

Here on Uppsala's plains, remote and cold,

in the winter nights we have often strolled.

Silent we walked. The plain lay nearby.

The stars had flamed since eternity.

The stars flamed, frightening, mute,

Side by side we went, strangers, on foot,

divided in striving, divided in eye,

Dear to us both were the plain and the sky.

Once folk the ancient hearths did raise

here in the far-off worlds' shimmering gaze.

Fire against fire in time no one knows

gathered their flocks while the earth froze.

Here fields were ploughed by the first to plough,

ploughed while in forests the wolves did howl.

Here on the sacred hearths glowing red

from the corn was baked a coarse, hard bread.

Here stood the court, where crowds made sacrifice,

full of dread in the threat of a long winter's ice,

full of wailing under vaults with light a-shake,

when round earth universal night did quake.

See how the lights on the plains twinkle cold,

fighting the dark that the winter nights hold!

The night is unending, blown bark, the earth's.

Give me your hand! We're the brood of the hearths.

1.

By ice-walls and ice-silence

is peace protected in my daybreak land,

where the air trembles, pale with hunger

for sun-life and sun-brand.

The thorn-thickets in fearful waiting

in hollow trunks hard round close in

all the flames that pray and beg

to soon burst forth in blossoming.

You know the word, you alone.

Speak, speak and wake my land!

Free the trees from their daybreak anguish,

light the air with your lifted hand!

Blossoms shall rain for your foot to trample,

sunbeams dance when smiles you pour.

Speak, speak! I desire to blossom

you to happiness, and nothing more.

Silent is space, pale with hunger.

Stiff and cold is my closed hand.

By ice-walls and ice-silence

is peace protected in my daybreak land.

And well I know that the magic word,

it is never said, I will never be free.

Mute your narrow lips close

when proud you stride like a deer past me.

2.

The whole of my soul I have fixed to one thought,

hard, hard, so I felt it with my hand,

the whole of my soul I have hurled through the air

to you, far away,

If you see it lie like an asteroid fallen,

still after flight glowing in the sand,

if you walk past it in your vaulting rhythm.

then you are likely not thinking of me.

The whole of my soul I have fixed to a single thought,

the whole of my soul lies heavy before your feet.

I myself am so empty it hurts and aches.

You, you my friend!

Do you not notice, or will you not notice

the thing that's been torn from its trembling roots?

Have you no use for my poor soul?

Am I just in the way again?

3.

If I take your wasted hand,

they will wither,

all the dreams of sunlit lands.

Let them fall!

Blossoms in white and pink,

fruit to harvest,

all is worth nothing

against your burden.

Waves with salt foam,

golden rocks

pale against your grey,

leafless evenings.

If I cannot ever

heal fate's blows -

give me your bitter day

to share!

Give me your meagre autumn!

I can freeze.

If there is a glint of consolation

it will glow.

Only a splash of light

is given to you

here in your empty house,

I give my life.

4.

Each word from you is like a seed.

Its root bores deep away.

I waken from a secret pain

and find no remedy.

Consumes me then like bitter thirst

Each movement that you made.

Each intonation and each glance

grows near and bright and great.

My day is grey with me and mine,

which makes my figure dull.

But mirror-bright is the night's world,

where you are all, all.

5.

I think death is like you,

tall and pale and straight like you,

temples cast in a vault that is the same,

sea-eyed, distant-eyed as you

and with the same lips, closed by pain.

You are death. I am yours,

my hand yours and my mind yours.

You have deadened all life's burgeoning,

lulled into a sorrowful sleep

dream and deed that scarce have tried their wing.

But I love you, my death,

you my long, bitter death,

in whose closed hand my life withers away.

You my sweet, sweet death -

I bless your torture's every day!

6.

All, all I owned

was thine more than mine.

All the most beautiful I wanted

was thine , thine , thine .

Aloud with thee I spoke

what no one in the world knows.

On endless roads

thou wast my loneliness.

if I lay awake at night

with nothing in my thought,

if I breathed, I felt thee, thee.

Thou wast round about.

Lifeless is life,

where thou dost not remain.

The world is an immense shell,

that has no kernel in.

7.

Light lily bells on Kungsangen's plain

I plucked one spring, when I thought it was fall.

My heart was like them - only much less light -

a mute, red bell that begged to call.

Where goes all the song that is choked and locked in?

Where goes all the longing that attains not a thing?

Perhaps it lies mixed in the water and soil.

Perhaps is is there in the wind's whistling.

Though nothing has happened, I can manage no more.

Mortally weary am I. What have I done?

Perhaps I have striven in lands none have seen?

Hard I toiled at the gate of the rising sun!

I dragged stones in sleepless night.

Then I built a marble palace in shimmering elegance.

My anguish raised the pinnacles. Of the fountain's laugh

one hears no more that every drop was once tears.     

Like fire burn the roses towards the pillars' stone,

and sunwhite towers drink blue peace that the heavens give.

But over the gate it says SOLACE. And the air is pure.

And I have prayed to the angels that there you shall live.

I put my bells by your locked, closed door.

To release their tongues was beyond my hand.

You say that your life is as bitter as before.

But I have built a palace for you in a far, far land...

8.

That which is said once is always said

and till the end of time will stay,

and no night of anguish has power

to wipe that word away.

But strange it is, that a single word

can choke the beauty we recall

and turn our aery dream to earth,

till remorse alone is all.

Thus grow cool two long and heavy years,

when the fairest things budding came,

before only one word, that eternally stands

and turns my life to shame.

9.

On my knees I want to give thanks

because you smiled.

Through stifling air and restlessness

moved a gentle wind, mild.

So bitterly salt are the tears

a repentant one must give.

I know you despise me.

I know you forgive.

In long days and nights

I have cruelly learned here

that we are here to lose

what we hold most dear.

Your hem I want to kiss

because you smiled.

A smile without scorn,

That is much, high-piled.

10.

I feel your footsteps in the hall.

I feel in each nerve your hurried steps.

which otherwise no one will notice.

Around me sweeps a wind of fire.

I feel your footsteps, your beloved footsteps,

and my soul hurts.

You move far away in the hall,

but the air billows with your footsteps

and sings as the sea sings.

I listen, caught in your consuming force.

In the rhythm of your rhythm, in time to yours,

beats my pulse in hunger.

11.

There is a happiness of death,

a happiness of destruction,

which to my thirsting mouth

only one can give,

a happiness inexorable

to senselessly embrace

and sink deep and dark

into annihilation's well.

I broke free of your shadow.

Around me it grows.

I hear your name

As I follow my ways.

I chose the light of day,

and I want your dark.

I will give sight and life

for your soul and your embrace.

12.

I am victory-crowned with suffering's wreath,

with the burning flowers of new, fresh pain,

though my shame was effaced by a hand so cool,

and mercy-mild your judgement came.

I am tottering drunk with aching and woe

I have tasted the bitter drink I desire

I want more. I want to see the cup's base.

I want to die on my threshold here.

Now the night has life, now the sky has power,

now the earth and things are in reality caught.

I am blissful in the splendour of the great dark

and with living pain I am hot.

I am proud to share the sorrow that is yours,

I am rich with all the old pain you gave breath.

But that swoon of rejoicing that binds me in,

that is the breathing of death.

13.

The snow it falls, the wind it whines,

frozen is Fyri's river.

The earth is lame and the heavens blind,

and life lies deserted forever.

It was a dream, a dream yesterday,

Today I have already woken.

When will your pain be again so intense

that I must share its hurting?

A day is so long. A day is so long.

Even longer is the night.

My mind is enclosed in a frozen vice,

and my thought shrinks ever more tight.

14.

I want to freeze in the street here below

To see two windows in a gable glow.

To me the one who lives there is very dear.

I grow sick at heart when there's light in there.

I will go to the corner, I will slowly turn,

so I'll catch a glimpse of you maybe, then.

That you are so near... Why am I here?

I grow sick at heart when there's light in there.

15.

Falling stars that the night scatters,

lightnings that glitter in flight,

proud suns that the darkness drowns -

who will call that destruction?

Tongue of fire till the last

you shall die, you shall fade,

unbending in losing all,

heavy with fate as an ancient song.

Mountain summits in immense outline,

sea's expanses at break of day,

great forests in miles-wide stretching -

such is all I know of you.

Sea-deafened in the roar of surf,

sun-dazzled in the light of snow,

lulled in triumphant dreams of murmuring pines -

thus do I bless your splendour.  

I DISTRUST...

I believe in those who live on a farm

and break the soil.

They take their strength from nourishing earth,

and strengthen the earth as well.

I distrust those who seek in want

a distant home.

They gladden so few, and only their sort.

But I am one of them.

Sooner my starving soul, I suppose,

like a dog with no master would stray

suspiciously shy round barred-up house

and freeze pitifully away,

than be chained fast to watch its farm

in honourable calling

and raise to the homeless migrant pack

a conviction-ridden howling.

I see them move over moor and marsh

wherever the dream will fly.

I know that I am blood of their blood.

What use then am I?

IN THE DARK

In the dark I lie and hear

bells that outside thunder near

with long and heavy, even strokes,

like deep breaths the darkness takes.

They deaden all and make all sleep

and free each object's misty shape

in long and heavy, even boom

that thought will never be free from.

I am amongst those who scarce exist

and only know and reminisce

about old darkness's beating heart

that hopes to see no morrow start.

That fears no morrow or its start.

COMPELLED

Of poverty I am a priest,

and will probably always be.

Who nothing has can dare the most,

for deed and thought set free.

I hear the evil voice's scorn:

'Virtue you make of need.

What have you then to abstain from?

What if you had your bread?'

Yes, it is true that I have stood

and begged at happiness' door

and wept when I was given nought

and all was empty as before.

Yes, it is true that all's compelled.

But is it worth less then?

One meaning in our song is held:

to make our fate a friend.

TO THE SHADOW OF A REALITY

You are one of my dreams -

good if no one wakes me! -

one of my beautiful candles,

that darkness not cover me.

Fighter for goals so pale,

ice and glass and sharpened steel!

The brilliant day

I scarce know if the dream will bear.

There is solace in the dream's perfumes,

cool, scarcely perceptible.

Yet I would give them all away

for the earthly real.

Warmth of dear beautiful hands...

I want to love, not fantasize.

Life's ripeness

the dream will never imitate.

THE TWO LINEAGES

My song is sung for the folk of Wrath

on the heath that is thistle-ridden,

for those whom the angel with flaming sword

drove out of forfeited Eden.

Thistle-down, thistle-down

over the fields wind-driven,

without the strength to root and grow

inside the pleasure garden.

But the legends say that God's sons

formerly found earth beauteous

on the hills of Morn, in the golden gleam

of primordial ages' radiance,

and the daughters of men were there as guests

in nights of the moon's billowy flounces,

sowed children from their ether-seed,

from lineage of heavenly princes.

The happy one meets their offspring,

and their hands bring happiness.

I have seen them go midst the thistles

who walked on the shores of the blest.- - -

But there is also value

in nights of sleepless dolour,

and he who knows what anguish is

knows more than many a scholar.

I have seen them walk midst the thistles.

They are free, they are weightless and clear,

and I quiver with longing and worship

for a gaze and a movement mere.

But say, who has touched our family's root,

those souls of glittering streamings

or you - with your eyes that are full of night

and your red mouth of bloodstained dreamings ?

THE SWALLOWS

Hurrying, arrowing swallows, on wings resting

high in the blue expanses,

wind-light in whistling gusts

scorning the earth's inertness -

like a laugh of ridicule,

clear, light, ringing,

with contempt your flight meets our hearts' weight,

like a jubilation,

leaping from heights,

tidings of space's own

power that plays, and light can penetrate...

Sun goes down,

but up there lingers all the day's grand state,

round about you,

high in a playfully won,

airy place, happy, fortunate.

TO SOMEONE WHO IS VERY YOUNG

Slender new moon,

white new moon,

pale-shimmering flame, lit

in the night's wide room,

clear blue moth,

frail blue moth,

startled awake and waiting-tensed,

when warm falls the twilight gloom,

fragile flower-bell,

bright flower-bell,

glass-brittle through and through,

elf and spring-being,

sylph and spring-being -

child, may happiness come to you!

I WANT TO MEET...

Armed, erect and and closed in armour

forth I came  -

but of terror was the mail-coat cast,

and of shame.

I want to drop my weapons,

sword and shield.

All that hard hostility

made me cold.

I have seen the dry seeds

grow at last.

I have seen the bright green

spread out fast.

Mightier than iron

is life's tenderness,

driven forth from the earth's heart

without defence.

The spring dawns in winter's regions,

where I froze.

I want to meet life's powers

weaponless .

FROM A BAD GIRL

I hope you're having a rotten time.

I hope you're lying awake like I am,       

and feeling strangely glad and stirred

and dizzy and anxious and very disturbed.

and suddenly you'll hurry up

to settle down and sleep like a top.

I hope it takes you longer than you think...

I hope you don't even get a wink!

THE STARS GROW IN THE SPRING...

The stars grow in the spring

great as drops that quiver,

soft as living creatures

with white bodies a-shimmer.

swelling like sacred fruits,

falling near, near,

too ripeningly heavy

for fragile heavens to bear.

Trembling starry creatures,

fair and defencelessly naked,

yearning to loosen and glide,

to touch the earth and waken,

yearning to serve their fate,

written above depth in light,

yearning to fight and create

and taste death and life.

Heaviest and whitest of all

near the horizon hangs

one that is willing to fall

ripe and clear to the hand,

Sense that the hour is near.

Someone waits for us to meet. 

Man with the temper of stars,

into my womb shake a fruit!

TORKEL TYRE

East of Bjura village

is a wild and desolate stretch,

where lichen-shaggy spruces

stand sullenly on watch.

There lived Torkel Tyre,

till murder outlawed the wretch.

Near Bjura village

lies a mossy stone.

If one hides behind it

when evening has begun,

one sees the village glimmer

with many a warm tone.

'There's a light in Halvar's farm.

There's a light in Torsten's place.

There sits Torsten carving

by a crackling log fire blaze.

There's a light in Kettil's cottage.

Each light I recognize.

What did I know of land,

safe on land ensconced?

Now on long nights I stand

and count the treasure I lost.

Gold gleams above the drifts

in winter nights' blue dust.'

Thus stood he and looked and looked,

when the sliding of skis was heard.

A panting maiden came wild in flight,

to the village in need she was turned.

Close behind her a shadow slid

with eyes that burned.

But Torkel seized his knife.

He hewed, he stabbed, he cut,

and sharp, white teeth

gave answers obstinate.

Near morning he felled the wolf,

but tired to death, lay flat.

We found him where he lay.

And note that we acted well.

We sent word to the priest.

He delivered the man's soul.

When the sun rose over the forest,

we beat Torkel to hell.

We could have spared his life,

but the value of such is not great.

A murderer was Torkel .

We acted as we ought.

We all are men from the land,

and this was done aright.

THE CARILLON

'The carillon plays, and the town listens quiet.

Such silver-pure sounds our world has never heard.

Such beautiful playing has no one, so elaborate no one.

O master, divine one, you, a miracle you have worked!'

'A man works no miracle, but God, God alone.

A man works no miracle, but God with his hand.

As dust are our lives, and our deaths a shadow's shadow.

Only he deserves reverence here in earthly life's land.'

Then spoke the town's prince: 'My carillon is glorious.

With honour does the town raise its summits to the skies.

That never you may lend your art to another,

as pledge, O master, I demand your eyes.' -

'My hand was made to work, my spirit to create,

for a hundred more carillons to life I was waked.

See here! My eye gleams with the fire from above,

which no prince may light, if once it is slaked.'

'There awaits all you wish for, that men can give you

of carefree days at my covered board

- cruel was I never - , only not the hours of toil.

Be pleased with your fate - know, I stand by my word.' -

'I suppose, mild prince, I must try your mildness.

I bow to the power of your princely discretion.

But one more time let me see my work and rejoice!

O powerful, o mild one, grant my plea satisfaction!'

Up he stepped to the bell-tower, and down again,

and the executioner took his eyes, then he led him away.

In his pain he was mute; but more mute his bells.

And never again did the carillon play.

Then said the town's prince: 'You shall die for your   

                                               misdeed,

you thief, who stole from the town its voice's fair laud.

On thousands your wretched eyes, your pride you've     

                                                avenged...'

He said: 'May I die! I have avenged God.'

THE CONDEMNED

When the great trial reached its end,

after judgement, speeches, all

the silent thoughts of the condemned

held colloquy in the silent hall.

One man to the other said:

'No one knows how we shall fare.

Perhaps it is really just the start

of a work that awaits us there.

Your features are very pale,

white as that white glow,

living as flames live.

To death we've still far to go.

Burning and without fear

we shall go to the bitter last,

burning and without fear

our spirits will rise like a spark.

Through empty, cold expanses

the wind may drive it far,

but where the forest is driest,

two hot sparks will fall.'

THE MAN WITHOUT MERCY

He is the man without mercy -

eyes of shimmering amber,

eyes of shining cold gold,

hands of ivory bone:

clear and hard eyes,

fine and hard hands -

reckoned by passionate dreamers

as stone of the desert's stone.

The desert has wide realms of sand

and strange springs,

dead cities and living leaves

and light for an anchorite.

There he has pitched his camp,

his thin, needy tent -

Trappist in science,

an ascetic of the mind.

His aspiring vulnerability

like a hindrance he breaks in the battle,

reckless, when needs be, and cold

to whistling, laughter, applause.

Inhuman he seems.

Like the north wind his pathos chills.

He fights the frightening fight of thought,

the man with no mercy at all.

SAMSON SINGS AS HE GRASPS THE PILLARS OF THE TEMPLE:

Ordained a nazir to the Lord

you scarcely possess a name,

chosen, lifted

from the earth's mild embrace you came.

Ordained a nazir to the Lord

you are called the Lord's hand

and brandish the Lord's lightning

in terror-stricken lands.

Ordained a nazir to the Lord

the Lord's spirit you bear

and have not your own spirit

to love a mortal dear.

Woe to that hour

when man and god I failed,

when I became the man Samson,

and the order's strength quailed.

In remorse grew my power

near the millstones' din.

Of victories easily won

they spoke to Judah's son.

Now I pull down Dagon's temple,

for Samson is devoured,

and I am again a nameless one,

whose name is the Lord's sword!

THE STAR

Sparklingly frosty

with frozen light

the Milky Way's waves wash

stars like gravel tight.

One only is mine.

She is known to my thought -

my fate's light of eternity,

my life and my lot.

In immense strength she rose,

when dark me did cloak.

When defenceless I fell, me

to star-life she woke.

With silver nails my soul

to a star was bound.

Thus wanders free its given way

my being's kernel and ground.

Who intends to choose me

must woo the star.

In her dwells my worth,

my will in her.

In her is my home,

From her my law on high.

O star, o my deed

and my goal, you are I!

THE GRASS'S SONG

Yesterday I lay broken

in the rainshowers ' stream.

Now washed and clean I rise

from degradation's dream.

I read in the light,

I hear with dread life's

eternal commandment 'Forget!'

in the morning's  hum.

I saw lightnings splinter

the noblest oak,

and I saw mountains weather

in the ages' joke,

but stronger than either

from the winters' peril

in a thousand springs I rise aloft,

immortal, weak.

My root is fixed in death,

in mouldered things' dwelling-place.

I do not remember their fates,

but I feel them sprout, increase.

The past's spirit trembles

in bright green meshes

and ripens to an eternal now

in the grassy ground's peace.

THE SEA

Salt, bitter salt

is the sea, and clear and cold.

In the depths much moulders away,

but the sea cleanses all.

Wild, prey-beast wild

is the surf's glittering leap,

but no human thoughts

are high as the song of the deep.

Strong, eternal and strong

is the waves' immense train,

and strong with the eternal sea

each wave soft, transient.

Though the sea asks blood of her man,

give your life to the sea.

At last, deep in the depths,

none attains a rest like he.       

IN MOTION

The sated day is never first.

The best day is a day of thirst.

Yes, there is goal and meaning in our path -

but it's the way that is the labour's worth.

The best goal is a night-long rest,

fire lit, and bread broken in haste. 

In places where one sleeps but once,

sleep is secure, dreams full of songs.

Strike camp, strike camp! The new day shows its light.

Our great adventure has no end in sight.

OF THOSE WHO FELL TOO SOON

Happy he that marches

in light of waiting's dawn.

Happy he that falls

long ere victory was won.

Before the battling army grows a host,

beings of light with mighty weapons to ply:

all the faithful who fell ere the harvest was ripened,

all the young who never had time to fade to ash.

Happy he that exchanges

the narrow life he bore

for their empire

and their victorious power.

Like pillars supporting a bridge over the deeps,

freed from human limits by human longing,

they bear on their shoulders the weary who succumb,

lead with arms of security the weak who hesitate.

Happy he that falls

and lives none the less.

In souls his soul he makes

a thousandfold increase.

Rest and death never had a portion in the strong.

They are still here in our battle. Forever they are ours.

High above the hosts their lances flame like fire,

raised as promises and signs and banners to follow.

Happy we that follow

Happy we for their giving.

We are dust and soil

and they the living.

THE FALLING MORNING STAR

'Fall,' said the Lord, 'fall,

defiant morning star!

darkness will I grant you gladly.

You are dearest to me in all the world.'

'Fall,' said the Lord, 'fall,

burning blue flame!

Gleam in the torment of the deep,

build yourself a city of black crystal!'

'Fall,' said the Lord, 'fall!

You who would taste all evil,

will you come back soon?

You are nearest to me in all the world.'

THE WORLD IS DREAMT...

The world is dreamt by a sleeping god,

and the dawn's shiverings moir ‚ his soul.

The memories of things that happened yesterday,

before the world was there,

haunt, glint.

That in whose being we have no part

meets us where the way bends,

it breathes a horror that is not ours,

from the limits far away,

from worlds with other laws.

Sleep, sleep heavier, slumberer ,

until the dream torments you no more,

or waken to the day, creator,

and make us real!

THE WORLD'S HEART

Say, where does the world's heart burn,

the world's heart of fire?

It lives on coarse, heavy prehistoric coal:

black darkness, dense night, Chaos.

Seek there!

For thus is the nature of fire:

strong with its foe's struggle -

itself a struggle, glowing struggle -

has no other nature.

And the victory? When the darkness has disappeared in  

                                                    flames?

Is the victory death?

Empty question and empty fear!

The world's heart is fire,

and fire wants to conquer.

THE CORRUPTER

I am led by a snake's gaze, rigid, cruel -

it stares towards me from the farthest distance,

guides my steps in the nearest nearness,

holds me captive in coercive fear,

binds my will...

Who gave the snake his fearful beauty,

the abyss attraction,

death sweetness?

Who gave horror the fatal delight

that entices like a darker happiness?

Perhaps there yonder, by the eternal springs,

where the veils fall,

the Corrupter will meet me in another form.

Art thou God's shadow, evil one?

God's nocturnal twin brother?

THE STONES

God had given us heavy souls of stone.

Then we stood on the shore of the sea,

where the sunbeams leapt, where the foam danced, where the gulls sailed in light.

Then we hurled the stones in a game of dying. One must do something with stones.

They grazed the surface, they bounded in arcs, they glided  

                                    over the deep like winds!

And happy is our sleep: it is touched by wings, by swallows  that hurtle over the water.

WE SLEEPY CHILDREN

In by the darkened shore glides a lonely white sail,

like a tired, probing bird seeking a refuge for the night,

and above in the deepening sky a bright twilight cloud,

drifting apathetically like one who is just about to fall   

                                                  asleep...

Now we turn back, we sleepy children, to our home near      

                                                   here,

and smooth our thoughts from our brow, and smooth our deeds                                             

                                             from our hands.

We leave them to fade like forgotten games, we drop them for

                                      that which is real

and lean with the blind trust of children against an                                                      unknown mother's knee.

THE BYGONE DAYS

When an old man lies ill, all his bygone days come

and sit gently in a ring around his bed.

They don't complain, they do not cry or sob.

They nod slowly and think of old things.

And each of them tells his never forgotten story,

and each of them has a candle and lights it quietly.

They are reflected clearly in the dark rivers' water.

He goes, goes beneath vaults, beneath arches of quivering   

                                                   light.

THE WATER BABIES

Around our cradle billowed soft as seaweed

transparent water-sprites, intangible.

Timelessly happy we rested in windless depth.

Who tore us loose from our home?

Like eddying bubbles we sighed towards the light,

like gleaming silver fishes we glided in lead-grey sea.

Then we stood with dripping hair on the shore one morning

in an alien land.

Never will we find our way home.

We go forth as in a dream.

Our moist, dark eyes are shy of the sun.

Our cool and gentle hands are shy of action.

Our floating, yielding souls are shy of loving.

They wriggle like serpents away from all scorching heat...

We go as in a dream, our world is foam.

Our distant coolness is a greeting from our father's kingdom,

where the gates arch up from glass-green water - the gates  

                                           to eternal rest.

LILITH'S SONG

The clouds hang heavy,

ripen in tepid darkness, where they're concealed,

night-blue clusters of grapes,

heavy with wine that silent pours on every field,

heavy with wine of the Deep,

heavy with secret power,

sucked out of sea and sky

and bitter dew in outermost darkness's shore.

Life's hot vapour

condenses in drops, falls in dead silent night.

Raise the cup! You shall capture

the key where no one his foot has set -

the land where the spirit freed

beyond time's border fence

tastes in eternities

things that are never felt or seen or sensed.

Behind waking worlds

seethe alien seas of delight and woe

the world-deep's smithy-forges,

from which leapt like a spark what our eyes know.

Do you dare take the way there,

blazed in horror's drunkenness?

Terror-struck, blessed

you will attain the eternal Mothers' dark houses...

Blown seed on wide waters,

flower of the Deep, that never saw its root,

dragonfly shy of the night -

one day the Mothers' night will greet your foot!

Death with pain is black.

Death with joy is white.

Plunged in his murmuring waves

you will forget life's coast of clouded light.

  For the Tree's Sake (1935)

NOWHERE

I am sick with poison. I am sick with a thirst

for which nature has not created any drink.

From every field leap streams and springs.

I stoop down and drink from the earth's veins

its sacrament.

And the heavens overflow with holy rivers.

I stretch up and feel my lips wet

with white ecstasies.

But nowhere, nowhere...

I am sick with poison. I am sick with a thirst

for which nature has created no drink.

WALPURGIS NIGHT

At last I stand near the mountain of the fates.

All around like stormclouds

crowd formless beings, creatures of the twilight,

black-winged,

phosphorous-eyed.

Shall I stay? Shall I go? The road lies dark.

If I stay peacefully here at the foot of the mountain,

then no one will touch me.

Calmly I can see their struggle like a play of the mist in the  

                                                           air,

myself merely a lost eye.

But if I go, if I go, then I shall know nothing more.

For the one who takes those steps

life becomes legend.

Myself fire

I shall ride on coiling snakes of fire.

Myself wind

I shall fly on winged wind-dragons.

Myself nothing,

myself lost in the storm

I shall fling myself forth dead or living, a fate future-heavy.

YOU CALL FOR PEOPLE

You call for people of great stature. What gives great stature

                                   to a person?

To become nothing and forget oneself for that which is greater  

                                     than she.

The unrepentant call out. They themselves would grow into giants

the moment they bowed their knees in the shadow of the immense  

                                                      things.

But raise your voices until the gods awake, until new gods

                                rise up and answer!

When no one asks for people any more, then your people will be  

                                                           here.

CHERUB

Also you, who suffer the agonies of everyone's condemnation,

also you are called to your place among the cherubim -

with lion's feet, with wings of sun,

with venerable human head:

beast-angel.

They call after you: 'Impure, impure!'

Because they were never afflicted by purity.

Flame, gather your sparks out of the corners,

the forge awaits, and the hammer that welds you to lightning

will teach you the lightning's swift purity

and your name among the cherubim.

THAT HOUR

No breathless summer night sky

reaches so far into eternity,

no lake, when the mists lighten,

mirrors such stillness

as that hour -

when loneliness's limits are effaced

and the eyes become transparent

and the voices become simple as winds

and there is nothing more to hide.

How can I now be afraid?

I shall never lose you.

THE NIGHT'S DEEP VIOLONCELLO

The night's deep violoncello

hurls its dark rejoicing out across the expanses.

The hazy images of things dissolve their form

                       in floods of cosmic light.

Swells, glowing long,

wash in wave upon wave through night-blue eternity.

You! You! You!

Transfigured weightless matter, rhythm's blossoming foam,

soaring, dizzying dream of dreams,

                          blindingly white!

I am a gull, and on resting, outstretched wings

I drink sea-salt bliss

                       far to the east of all I know,

                       far to the west of all want,

and brush against the world's heart -

blindingly white! 

YES, OF COURSE IT HURTS

Yes, of course it hurts when buds are breaking.

Why else would the springtime falter?

Why would all our ardent longing

bind itself in frozen, bitter pallor?

After all, the bud was cover all the winter.

What new thing is it that bursts and wears?

Yes, of course it hurts when buds are breaking,

hurts for that which grows

                         and that which bars.

Yes, it is hard when drops are falling.

Trembling with fear, and heavy hanging,

cleaving to the twig, and swelling, sliding -

weight draws them down, though they go on clinging.

Hard to be uncertain, afraid and divided,

hard to feel the depths attract and call,

yet sit fast and merely tremble -

hard to want to stay

                    and want to fall.

Then, when things are worst and nothing helps

the tree's buds break as in rejoicing,

then, when no fear holds back any longer,

down in glitter go the twig's drops plunging,

forget that they were frightened by the new,

forget their fear before the flight unfurled -

feel for a second their greatest safety,

rest in that trust

                   that creates the world.

A STILLNESS EXPANDED

A stillness expanded, soft as sunny winter forests.

How did my will grow sure and my way obedient to me?

I carried in my hand an etched bowl of ringing glass.

Then my foot became so cautious and will not stumble.

Then my hand became so careful and will not tremble.

Then I was flooded over and carried by the strength from fragile

                                                      things.

YOU ARE THE SEED

You are the seed and I your soil.

You lie in me and grow.

You are the child expected.

I am your mother now.

Earth, give your warmth!

Blood, give your sap!

An unknown power requires today

all the life I have had.

The flowing warm wave

knows no dam on earth,

wider it wants to create,

breaks its way forth.

That is why it hurts to the living quick

inside me now:

something is growing and breaking me -

my love, it is you!

IF I COULD FOLLOW YOU

If I could follow you far away,

further than everything you know,

out to the world-loneliness

of the outermost regions go,

where the Milky Way rolls

a bright dead foam

and where in dizzying space

you seek a home.

I know: it is impossible.

But when from your baptism

shivering blind you rise,

all throughout space

I shall hear your cries,

be new warmth for you,

be a new embrace,

be close to you in a different world

among things with unborn names.

BLONDE MORNING

Blonde morning, lay your soft, smooth hair

against my cheek and breathe undisturbed in your silence.

The earth opens wide and wider your giant chalice,

born anew in closed darkness.

On bright wings

the Miracle lands like an immense insect

to lightly graze against unsuspecting

awakening pistils.

Morning on the seventh day...

RIPE AS A FRUIT

Ripe as a fruit the world lies in my lap,

it ripened last night,

and its rind is the thin blue membrane that stretches

                                       bubble-round,

and its juice is the sweet and fragrant, streaming, burning     

                             torrent of sunlight.

And out into the transparent universe I leap like a swimmer,

submerged in a baptism of ripeness and born to a power of       

                                              ripeness.

Consecrated to action,

light as a burst of laughter

I cleave a golden sea of honey that desires my hungry hands.

FAREWELL

I would like to have woken you to a nakedness like a naked      

                               evening in early spring,

when the stars brim over

and the earth burns beneath melting snow,

I would like to have seen you just once

sink in the darkness of creative chaos,

would like to have seen your eyes like wide-open space,

ready to be filled,

would like to have seen your hands like flowers unfolded,

empty, new, in expectancy.

You are going, and nothing of this have I given you.

I never reached to where your being lies bare.

You are going, and nothing of me are you taking with you -

leaving me to defeat.

Another farewell I remember:

we were hurled from the crucible like a single being,

and when we parted, we no longer knew

which was I and which was you...

But you - like a bowl made of glass you have left my hand,

as finished as only a dead thing is and as changeable,

as without any memories other than the light imprints of fingers

that are washed away in water.

I would like to have woken you to a formlessness like a         

                       formless flickering flame

that finds at last its living form, its own...

Defeat, oh, defeat!

NOW I KNOW

Now I know how much you hid and kept silent about.

That was your shell.

But why have you hidden yourself so well from me?

The thought grinds still.

I know. I remember: one single case,

where judgement was mine to wield -

and then your inner world's enchanted land

was forever concealed.

As long as our love has one chance left,

if even only one,

that long will our love be a closed hand -

and to us justice be done.

MY SKIN IS FULL OF BUTTERFLIES

My skin is full of butterflies, of fluttering wings -

they flutter out across the meadows and enjoy their honey

and flutter home and die in sad small spasms,

and not a grain of pollen is disturbed by light feet.

For them the sun exists, the hot, immeasurable, older than the  

                                                    ages...

But under skin and blood and inside the marrow

heavily heavily imprisoned sea-eagles move,

broad-winged, that never let go of their prey.

How would your tumult be in the sea's spring storm?

How would be your cry, when the sun annealed yellow eyes?

Closed is the cave! Closed is the cave!

And between the claws twist white as cellar sprouts

the nerves of my innermost being.

THE TREE BENEATH THE EARTH

There grows a tree beneath the earth;

a mirage pursues me,

a song of living glass, of burning silver.

Like darkness before light

must all weight melt,

where only one drop falls of the song from the leaves.

An anguish pursues me.

It oozes out of the earth.

There a tree suffers deeply in heavy layers of earth.

Oh, wind! Sunlight!

Feel that agony:

the promise of fragrance of paradise miracles.

Where do you walk, feet, that tread

so soft or hard

that the crust cracks and yields up its prey?

For the tree's sake, have mercy!

For the tree's sake, have mercy!

For the tree's sake I call you from the four points of the              

                                                                                     compass!

Or must we wait for a god - and which one?

OUR EYES ARE OUR FATE

Our eyes are our fate.

So lonely you become, poor eyes,

with stars that refuse to have mercy

in a living, earthly way.

Had I seen less,

I would think other thoughts,

and an outcast grows slack,

abandoned to the just.

Holy, holy, holy

is the truth, the terrifying,

I know it, I bow down,

and it has a right to everthing .

But flesh and blood shiver,

the living seeks life,

and warm is humans' company

and cold their contempt.

And praying I wander

among freezing light-years,

seeking for help

ro rise from my grave.

Remember with ardent tenderness

eyes far away,

also those that are lost

in the sea of loneliness.

Then I cannot complain.

Then I must give thanks.

With them I have shared

what I know, what I remember.

And through the darkness I sense

home and company.

Beloved sister eyes!

You existed. You exist.

CONFESSION

Never meant to be a rebel,

and yet it was forced on me.

Why is my fate not private?

Why can I not let it be?

Or, if now I must fight,

why is there torment there?

Why not with sounding music,

when at last I am forced to dare?

Blood of my blood, that judged me harshly

and cast me out into shame,

I knew when I was ejected,

that I broke on a whole all the same,

felt a sacred communion

behind the condemning words,

knew with anguish: you are I -

and was bowed down to the earth.

But as I lay and believed myself mute,

I heard the darkness whine.

Souls from the same torments' room

were breathing by my side.

I heard my own cry for help

rise up from deserts void,

knew with dread: I am you -

and could not be quiet.

Cowardly, cowardly, thrice cowardly,

All the same, I must fight,

be struck to the ground and rise again

with all my nerves snapped.

must feel like branding irons

the judgements of the stark -

and obey and obey a scorching fire

that blossoms out of the dark.

PRAYER TO THE SUN

Merciless one with eyes that have never seen the dark!

Liberator who with golden hammers breaks blocks of ice!

Save me.

Straight as thin lines the flowers' stems are sucked into the   

                                                   heights:

nearer to you will their calyxes tremble.

The trees hurl their strength like pillars towards their glory:

only up there

do they spread out their light-thirsty leaf-arms, devoted.

Man you drew

from an earth-fixed stone with blind gazes

to a walking swaying plant with heaven's wind about his forehead.

Yours is stalk and stem. Yours is my backbone.

Save it.

Not my life. Not my skin.

Over the outer no gods dispose.

With extinguished eyes and broken limbs

he is yours, who lived erect,

and with the one who dies erect

you are there, when darkness swallows darkness.

The rumbling rises. The night swells.

Life shimmers so deeply precious.

Save, save, seeing god,

what you gave.

YOUNG WILLS WHINE

Young wills whine

like masterless spears.

Fear has hurled them

into space's spheres.

Trembling with battle

and strength in surfeit

they seek targets to strike

they seek powers to worship.

But wills that ripen,

they become trees and strike root,

ready to shield

a land at your foot,

a small stretch of ground,

but necessary, like life,

where something precious grows,

torn by the winds' strife.

If the glade seems narrow

against space without end

and the tree perhaps lifeless

against spears that blind,

then forget not the leaf

with its life-green colour,

and forget not the sap

that seethes through the marrow.

Be not afraid, be still

that harvest night,

when the voices say:

'Your bounds are set.

You too shall be silent

among the watching faithful.

You also shall strike root,

and become tree, and ripen.'

THE DOORWAY

Too many times have I passed through the doorway.

It rises so high and is erased in sunlight,

and under the arch one hears passing

eternal winds in eternal spaces.

The threshold is made of promise-stones, the staircase to an    

                                                 altar,

to which he slips through who consecrates himself to a gift

with his past time and his time to come

and a will that is whole.

Too many times have I passed through the doorway.

And yet I pray:

Watchman at the door, lord of all beginning,

let me through! I still have strength.

As truly as I never hid anything away,

take, but take to the last fragment.

The day I divide, the day I reckon,

bar my way and cast me into the melting-oven.

All is a door. All is a beginning.

The axle of life is in your hands.

Whole I pass under the dizzying arch,

and eternal winds in eternal spaces

drink my gift.

IDYLL

Your voice and your footsteps fall soft as dew on my working    

                                                     day.

Where I sit there is spring in the air around me from your living  warmth.

You flower in my thought,  you flower in my blood, and I wonder only         

that my happy hands do not blossom into heavy roses.

Now the space of the everyday closes around us two, like a soft,

                                                                         gentle mist.

Are you afraid of becoming a prisoner, are you afraid of drowning

                                                                                     in the greyness?

Do not be afraid: in the everyday's innermost depth,

in the heart of all life,

there burns with quietly humming flames a deep, secret festival.

FOR THE HOUR OF GREAT HUMILIATION

For the hour of great humiliation I would also give thanks,

the hour when one sees that one is naked

and without a muddying vestige of pride

lets oneself be arranged

like a speck of dust in the gleam from wondrous worlds -

wondrous everything, wondrous health and life,

wondrous shelter, bread and water,

and more than anything wondrous the undeserved favour

of a human being's eternally established trust.

PYRE

Transparent, bright and ardent,

beautiful mantle, flare,

slip your way close as water

round my body, waiting here.

I stand bound and quiet,

have no unshed defiance.

Have no resistance left,

no futile strugglings .

Thus in anguish without air

comes the peace that waiting brings.

Here all hope is laid over,

wants nothing other.

Like an aspen leaf my body,

my soul like a flickering flame,

and there far away inside

I am free all the same.

Great silence moves me

beyond all that destroys me.

INVULNERABLE

Invulnerable, invulnerable

is he that grasps the primordial saying:

There is no happiness and unhappiness.

There is only life and death.

And when you have learnt it and ceased to chase the wind

and when you have learnt it and ceased to be frightened by the  

                                                       gale

then come back and teach me one more time:

There is no happiness and unhappiness.

There is only life and death.

I began to repeat it when my will was born,

and will cease to repeat it when my will has ceased to be.

The secret of the primordial sayings

we acquire until our death.

KNOWLEDGE

All the cautious ones with long nets

meet with the sea's giant laughter.

Friends, what do you seek on the shore?

Knowledge can never be captured,

can never be owned.

But if, straight as a drop,

you fall into the sea to dissolve,

ready for any transformation -

then you will awake with mother-of-pearl skin

and green eyes

on meadows where the sea's horses graze

and be knowledge.

DWARF PINE

Here in eternal gales

dwarf pine works its way up from the stone,

bends wearily,

knots itself defiantly,

creeps subdued.

Black against the evening's stormy sky

twisted ghostly outlines are drawn.

Monster is seized by loathing

for monster.

A groaning passes through the torn crowns:

Oh, to look one single time

straight towards the light,

to rise, a royal oak,

a boyish birch,

a golden virgin maple.

Hide your dreams, cripple.

Here are the outermost skerries . As far as the eye can see:

dwarf pine.

THE MOUTHS

Around me float terrible mouths.

The suburban train is thudding.

These are mothers.

Mouths of predatory fish,

locked and tensed in greedy fear:

to eat or be eaten.

Themselves eaten away (no one has noticed)

they lug their entrails in string bags.

Dead eyes, dead fear,

mouths of predatory fish.

This is the lover.

Paint-swollen mushroom mouth

sucks for prey.

The shame of having given herself, the shame of the cheated

sucks for revenge of a thousand triumphs,

is never sated,

settles in layers of tortured impudence

around a wet mushroom mouth.

This is the pious man,

who with holy pursing

hides and denies his lips.

They cannot be seen, do not exist -

God himself cannot see them.

Why is he afraid of his lips?

What do they look like when he is asleep?

This is the happy woman,

she who became a possessor.

Among all those who struggle

she is the one who prevailed.

No lever will ever force open those jaws,

screwed tight around life's prize.

But over there by the window,

half-open,

flowers a mouth that captures nothing.

What do you breathe over the wide world,

so world-estranged?

Yourself?

When will you be scared down there into the deep

to predatory fish

and sucking mouths,

snatch wildly after hunted prey,

slash desperately at the others?

Tomorrow,

if you want to live.

So I will take my staff and wander

and seek another world for you,

a world where mouths are allowed to be flowers

and breathe like flowers

their life's breath

and flow like flowers

from deep sources

and stand like flowers

happily open.

Around you snap our deep-sea mouths.

The suburban train is thudding.

SEA PRAYER

Sea swell, come washing,

let me taste that sound's round, salty flow,

the sound that was given me

as primordial name aeons and aeons ago!

Words that no mortal

lips can tell

lie hidden

in the fresh, cold swell.

Long, too long

I starved on human words too easily told.

I want to rise up,

I want to satisfy my mouth at my mother's board.

Like a child in loathing's remorse

lost far away to roam,

I turn hungrily round

to the songs of my home.

Let me drink

the speech of speech from a dull roar that never abates.

Let me clear

to your resting depth of light that creates.

Within soul and spirit

I hear your song.

Rise in my blood, and flower

in my tongue!

THE WAY IS NARROW

The way is narrow that two must go,

inhumanly narrow, it can seem sometimes,

and yet it is a human way, even so.

From buried things' primordial slime

rise monsters woken by the warmth,

and bar the way where you would climb.

No flight can make you free at last.

They appear again by new waysides.

You have no choice.