Some thought about change....

When i took a little walk early this morning i noticed how much change the nature in my neighborhood had gone through just in the last several days. Autumn seems to have set in full speed here now and i can't use the words "late summer" anymore when i am describing the days because suddenly there is VERY AUTUMN here. All the late summer apples in my neighbors garden have fallen to the ground, yellow and orange leaves are dancing in the wind and not to mention the air: so fresh now that my cheecks fastly turns red.
I have been writing on a letter to a friend these days and i was writing down some lines of John O'Donohue, a writer and poet that we both treasure.These are the lines:

"To break the dead shell of yesterdays. To risk beeing disturbed and changed". 

Oh how i LOVE these words....and when i wrote them down these incredibly beautiful photos (that i have fallen completely in love with) by Madelyn appeared in my thoughts. For me her photos ARE poems.

Both the words of O'Donohue and the photos by Madelyn makes me think about change.......change both in nature and in my own everyday life.......it reminds me of what nature has learnt me over and over again while i have been viewing the changes of season: to resist less...to trust more....to let go more.....to embrace more....

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Scandinavian poetry, part eight.

I am so facinated by all the insects and small animals there is to be found around us,
this little one took a rest on my veranda floor some days back. He reminds me of a King wearing his long soft velvet cape! A while back i read the book The sound of a wild snail eating and in summer The book of bees, it is such a facinating thing to learn more about the worlds of these tiny creatures...

A poem
by the norwegian poet Rolf Jacobsen (1907-1994)

Green light

Creatures that rustle in the shadows, all the crooked
deformed ones in the world, with tiny feet and far too many eyes,
can hide in the grass- that's why its there,
silent and full of moonlight among the continents.

I have lived in the grass among the small ones that resemble broken twigs.
From their towers of cowslip the bumblebees came like bells
into my heart with words of magic order.
The wind took my poem and spread it out like dust.

I have lived in the grass with the Earth and i have heard it breath-
like an animal that has walked a long way and is thirsting for the water holes
and i felt it lie down heavily on its side in the evening like a buffalo,
in the darkness between the stars, where there is room.

The dance of the winds and the great wildfires in the grass i remember often;
-the shadow play of smiles on a face that always shows forgiveness.
But why it has such great patience with us deep down in its iron core,
its huge magnesium heart, we are far from understanding.

For we have forgotten this; that the Earth is a star of grass,
a seed-planet, swirling with spores as with cloudes from sea to sea,
a whirl of them. Seeds take hold under the cobblestones
and between the letters in my poem, here they are.

Translated by Roger Greenwald.
From North in the world: Selected poems of Rolf Jacobsen.
 

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Scandinavian poetry, part seven

Cobalt
by Rolf Jacobsen

Colors are words’ little sisters. They can’t become soldiers.
I’ve loved them secretly for a long time.
They have to stay home and hang up the sheer curtains
of our familiar kitchen, bedroom and den.

I’m very close to young Crimson, and brown Sienna
but even closer to thoughtful Cobalt with her distant eyes and
     untrampled spirit.
We walk in dew.
The night sky and the southern oceans
are her possessions
and a tear-shaped pendant on her forehead:
the pearls of Cassiopeia.
We walk in dew on late nights.

But the others.
Meet them on a June morning at four o’clock
when they come rushing toward you,
on your way to a morning swim in the green cove’s spray.
Then you can sunbathe with them on the smooth rocks.
     -Which one will you make yours?

Translated by Roger Greenwald.
From North in the world: Selected poems of Rolf Jacobsen.

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"Skin remembers how long the years grow
when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel
of singleness, feather lost from the tail
of a bird, swirling onto a step,
swept away by someone who never saw
it was a feather. Skin ate, walked,
slept by itself, knew how to raise a 
see-you-later hand. But skin felt
it was never seen, never known as
a land on the map, nose like a city,
hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque
and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.

Skin had hope, that's what skin does.
Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.
Love means you breathe in two countries.
And skin remembers--silk, spiny grass,
deep in the pocket that is skin's secret own.
Even now, when skin is not alone,
it remembers being alone and thanks something larger
that there are travelers, that people go places
larger than themselves." 

Two countries by Naomi Shihab Nye

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Scandinavian poetry, part five

-photo by saara

A beautiful poem
by the norwegian author and painter Stein Mehren (born 1935)


I hold your head
 
I hold your head
in my hands, as you hold
my heart in your affection
as everything holds and is
held by something other than itself
As the sea lifts a stone
to its strands, as the tree
holds the ripe fruit of autumn, as
the world is lifted through worlds and space
So are we both held by something and lifted
to where mystery holds mystery in its hand
 
From MOT EN VERDEN AV LYS, 1963.
Translation is by Elizabeth Rokka.

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Scandinavian poetry, part four

-photo by saara

 Some of my favourite poems by the Norwegian poet Rolf Jacobsen (1907-1994)

Just delicate needles

It’s so delicate, the light.
And there’s so little of it. The dark
is huge.
Just delicate needles, the light,
in an endless night.
And it has such a long way to go
through such desolate space.
So let’s be gentle with it.
Cherish it.
So it will come again in the morning.
We hope.


*****
  
Look 

The moon thumbs through the book of the night.
Finds a lake on which nothing’s printed.
Draws a straight line. That’s all it can do.
That’s enough.
A thick line. Right to you.
Look!


*****

Sunflower

What sower walked over earth,
which hands sowed
our inward seeds of fire?
They went out from his fists like rainbow curves
to frozen earth, young loam, hot sand,
they will sleep there
greedily, and drink up our lives
and explode it into pieces
for the sake of a sunflower that you haven’t seen
or a thistle head or a chrysanthemum.

Let the young rain of tears come.
Let the calm hands of grief come.
It’s not as evil as you think.

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Scadinavian poetry, part three

Scandinavian poetry is sadly not often translated into english but luckely one of my favourites are:
the swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer. Tranströmer is considered to be one of the most influential Scandinavian poets of recent decades and was awareded with the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Some days back i came across this film by the British director Martin Earle illustrating excerpts of Tranströmer's poem "Schubertiana", enjoy.

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guest post by cloud gatherer hold me down

 

beneath this cloudless sky there is nowhere to hide. the epitome of naked. motives are questioned. their magnitude in relation to hearts. i trace the constellations in and beyond my own flight path and wear the contradictions like a second skin. i can teach you to read these maps; to listen to the gentle thundering beneath your bones and the way the hallowed ground sings and screams that love is the opposite of gravity. and i'll dance in your palm when the moon is on fire warning of battles to come, where worlds are tasted on blood stained teeth and the road of our spines all cracked and worn leads back to where it all started. but let me ask you, if i were to say "sacrifice is love made holy", with what would you reply? and would i even understand? reading the pattern of your words, peeling them back until red turns gold and drips and i start to wonder for how long have you been wielding lightning bolts from your palms? and what of these invisible walls? are we not gods? come closer...

the morning is tinged with blue. im exhaling warm clouds and coming to the realisation that this body isnt big enough for me to scratch the names of all i love. i'm moving onto the walls. the already written pages. making new maps. searching for the life behind eyes. even those whose smiles cannot disguise their disenchantment. i worship the god in you. all of you. in me. in the books and the trees and earth and i eat all the rainbows. the strings of words one pearl at a time. until what? until i reach the hearts and mouths from whence they came. and then? nothing and everything. only the knowledge that my desire continues to expand until i can no longer touch the edges. and you. carved in stone made flesh forever standing in the centre of the storm. so do it just because. because of the flower in my hair. the silver wing around my neck. because the blue changes shade dependent on her mood. because the wind blows through the house and rattles all the windows. because we are all corners and curves. not one or the other. but both. or none. do it mouth to mouth and break the skin. do it because im cannibalistic in my desire for offerings of blood and guts. deeper than transparent things like raindrops and tears. because there are only so many times you will see the moon full. do it only completely when you feel it pressed hard against your edges. a haunting or possession tightly held by ghostly hands. do it because to not is to lose it. because i want to see my fingerprints everywhere...

sitting by midnight lakes reflecting stars below and above it becomes impossible to tell which way is up. once during a long lost night i heard the wind, at least i think it was the wind, whisper my name. and not even this name, but rather my real name. i am a journey. a story. a circle. an ouroboros. harmony of asymmetry. so old i am unable to tell you where i begin. contemplating cosmogony provokes the longing to remember all of our explosions. reciting stories locked in scars and chests where only angels dare to tread. both archer and prey. i pray. i know not to whom, but i say thank you. alot. grateful for having nothing and everything to learn. and LIFE. in which to leave my map. my mark. my trail of meandering dirty footprints. i was here.

words by cloud gatherer hold me down

art work "second skin" by julie massy

 

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Please call me by my true name
by  
Thich Nhat Hanh

Don't say that I will depart tomorrow --
even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope.

The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that is alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing
on the surface of the river.
And I am the bird
that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily
in the clear water of a pond.
And I am the grass-snake
that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.
And I am the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo,
with plenty of power in my hands.
And I am the man who has to pay
his "debt of blood" to my people
dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.

My joy is like Spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and my laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart
can be left open,
the door of compassion.

Photo by the beautiful
Madelyn Mulvaney

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scandinavian poetry, part two

Romanesque Arches
by Tomas Tranströmer

Inside the huge romanesque church the tourists jostled in the half darkness.
Vault gaped behind vault, no complete view.
A few candle-flames flickered.
An angel with no face embraced me
and whispered through my whole body:
'Don't be ashamed of being human, be proud!
Inside you vault opens behind vault endlessly.
You will never be complete, that's how it's meant to be.'
Blind with tears.
I was pushed out on the sun-seething piazza
together with Mr and Mrs Jones, Mr Tanaka and Signora Sabatini
and inside them all vault opened behind vault endlessly.

photosource

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scandinavian poetry, part one

When They Sleep
by Rolf Jacobsen
(1907 - 1994)
Original language Norwegian
English version Robert Hedin

All people are children when they sleep.
there's no war in them then.
They open their hands and breathe
in that quiet rhythm heaven has given them.
They pucker their lips like small children
and open their hands halfway,
soldiers and statesmen, servants and masters.
The stars stand guard
and a haze veils the sky,
a few hours when no one will do anybody harm.
If only we could speak to one another then
when our hearts are half-open flowers.
Words like golden bees
would drift in.
-- God, teach us the language of sleep.

photosource

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