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Philip Brady
An Introduction to Torild
Warden�r's "The Drift of Days and Nights"
I FIRST MET Torild Warden�r at Fundacion
Valparaiso, a writers and artists colony on the coast of Andalusia in
Spain. In fact, it was there in that brilliant swath of desert between
the Mediterranean and the white cliffs of the town of Mojacar that
Torild composed "The Drift of Days and Nights," which Artful Dodge now
has the privilege to offer to American readers. Though she and I spent
a few languorous afternoons transposing her Norwegian into English, it
wasn't until a year later, when Torild sent me John Irons'
translations, that I saw laid out before me a landscape as magical as
the Andalusian desert where these poems were conceived.
But the landscape of "The Drift of Days and
Nights" is not one a tourist of Spain or Norway would recognize. Nor is
it solely an internal landscape, a map of the mind at play, though it
is that too. These poems instead explore the space where the sublunary
and eternal touch. That sounds like rarefied air, but here it's a
recognizable, even intimate space, teeming with the quotidian and the
cosmic: fennel, car mirrors and nebula. It is a stratum created from
the aura of named things; no, not the aura; the fever, a vitality
threatening to implode. Whether Warden�r describes traffic in a city
tunnel, or the contents of her refrigerator, or "toes that feel
squeezed even in the best shoes," always these poems spiral out from a
force inside the enclosed space.
Their power derives not only from the plenitude
of things seen and named, but from the reassortment of the great and
small; the world shaken and reassembled slightly off the mark so that
we almost see the fault lines. "All of it," Warden�r reminds us, is
"caused by a friction, a movement which I begin." But friction here
does not sand the world down to the merely ironic; we are not asked to
choose between alternative realities. Rather, "The Drift of Days and
Nights" is just that; a permeation, a drift, a fabric made from
striations of light and dark.
Much has been made of the question of form in
prose poems; whether such a thing isn't an oxymoron. These prose poems
address that question; not directly; these are not reflexive or
rhetorical pieces. But they address the question by revealing one
source of poetic form: the need to make something that feels as
liberating and as pressured as the life of a human form. With relaxed
speed, in a voice that shifts from comic to elegiac, Warden�r shows us
that poetry is never a matter of scale, that its gift is to make us see
Blake's "eternity in a grain of sand, infinity in an hour." Ultimately,
the form of these poems derives from the tension they maintain;
gracefully, elegantly; between poetry and prose, day and night, air and
space, identity and anonymity, life and death. This is their
form-though not perhaps immediately apprehended. It is a form that
comes to us slowly, by accretion, and it asks more from us than our
attention: it asks our participation, asks us to enter the
in-betweenness and feel the consequences of "the small movements [we]
perform: a rolling of the neck, nails across a slightly shaky surface,
the decision to add extra weight to the short day."
This issue of Artful Dodge is
the first I've had the good fortune to be involved in as Poetry Editor.
I'm especially proud to facilitate Torild Warden�r's first appearance
in print in the United States-grateful for the chance to revisit and
share, in English, in Ohio, the inspiring landscapes of "The Drift of
Days and Nights."--Youngstown, Ohio, December 21, 2000
Torild Warden�r
Five pieces of advice, entered
I am cowardly but persevering--sometimes mutter that courage is the
prime virtue
1. Stay untamed and imitate good people's actions
preen myself under cover of being human, scribble down notes
2. Have many slogans and let everything your eye
falls on at any time be your
fresh young helper
prostrate myself before the great authorities; wind directions, masses
of
snow, nights and days
3. Walk over the face of the earth, see the moon
in all its drama, the towns
beneath, the attacks
and retreats of nights and days
the rustling comes from the hardwood forests
4. Visit the gardens of the world
I'd prefer to go straight to paradise in a
large-scale freight, but that's
probably unlikely
5. Love the dangers of this world
so I'll try as best I can to follow the five
pieces of advice I've been given.
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
Opals
That her eyes are so light. Hm. I study them, they fill with water, I
thought the iris became darker when this sort of thing happened; hers
just become lighter, like opals, the bringer of woe, the precious stone
for kings. Mouth red. Skin white. Her hands are trembling and her voice
is weak. Eyes like opals. I drift off, to my astonishment I am unable
to memorize the last thing that's been said, I try to fix my gaze but
it immediately starts to wander. Because of the opals I think of
Australia and the bizarre animal life there and the lies told about the
degenerate people.
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
Around lunchtime
It seems as if the fennel is hollow, I can't know for sure, it smells
of liquorice. I slice through it with the Japanese knife with the flat
blade and the sound is strange, it is green even though it is winter, I
hold it up against the snow-air, I think of other plants: herbs,
oregano, large bushes of lavender, I'm forced southwards as usual, this
time to the amphitheatre in N�mes. A rumbling comes from the fridge,
I've heard of fridges that suddenly explode, because of heat turned
inwards in the cold, a force inside the enclosed space.
Who can know the day of their death? Will those
left behind me be able to work out my bank connections and insurances?
Ought I to make out a detailed will? They are exceptional, those to be
left behind me, some of them a bit older than me, others younger. All
of them believe they will live long, be happy and think that when they
are to die it will happen imperceptibly, perhaps while they're asleep,
perhaps in the middle of a dream plaited out of large-leafed ivy.
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
Ill at ease, well at ease
Perhaps just make do with pictures of the lemon grove,
the nebula or Mars, for despite its declared mobility the body
always stays put in precisely the same place-on the verge of the world,
weighed down by nutrients, by self-inflicted exercises, afflicted by
fever
and unassumingly circling around in its own region
bent over at first at the memory of stones, its own weight, its red scar
tissue
then upright: well-tempered with two taut achilles tendons, one eye
green, one brown
everything apparently beautifully symmetrical, in its inescapable
order.
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
I make a U-turn I
I like the small cartilage clicks my head makes when I let it do
circles. I especially like the fact that no one else can hear them, but
then again, there are plenty of other sounds to derive pleasure from:
the effective creaking when the plastic steering wheel in the car is
swung to the right or left, the clink my boxes make when they are
opened and shut time after time producing a full, short, sharp and at
the same time muffled sound. All of it caused by a friction, a movement
which I begin. Nothing much happens as a result, except for the small
amount I set in motion, the small movements I perform: a rolling of the
neck, nails across a slightly shaky surface, the decision to add extra
weight to the short day.
I make sounds with my teeth as I drive into the
tunnel and the day hangs like a dark banner over the town, a heavy
canopy of moisture and darkness and I drive into the tunnel where the
lights are bright orange and the fans stand still a long time while I
take shallow, cautious breaths so as not to be poisoned. My back-seat
passenger starts to fidget, to stop talking, to sweat, fumbles for the
handle to wind down the back window, but changes his mind on seeing my
look in the back mirror. The conversation between us, which so far has
been relaxed and natural, accompanied by creaks from the steering
wheel, comes to an end. I pick up Dagens Nyheter and turn to page
nineteen to read the obituaries and to study the small symbols above
the names: crosses, hearts, circles and doves. Condensation starts
fogging up the windows and someone in the tunnel begins to sound his
horn, more and more drivers simultaneously do the same and I lean over
the steering wheel and join in too. The newspaper slides down onto the
floor, the backseat rigours my car has had to endure make it move as it
was a live, restless animal that has got wedged within a large flock in
a narrow enclosure. The car-bodies stamp in the narrow trap like herds
in long rows in both directions, but suddenly the queue begins to move
forwards and after a couple of minutes we are out in the open again in
a roundabout that spreads us out to all four corners of the town. Where
would you like to get off? I ask. He begins to explain, but I say that
I could just as well take you to your doorstep, and when he protests, I
do a U-turn and set off in the opposite direction while there is a
sudden hush in the back seat.
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
I make a U-turn II
I take my hands off the steering wheel and start conducting. Gigli and
Merrill are beaux-esprits as well as friends, singing their hearts out.
I conduct all three of us; it sounds beautiful, we are singing a Bizet
opera together, I am moved by the song, by the trio I form with the
maestros, the road surface is dry, the tyres grip well, the countryside
does not sweep past at all, and I sit still and sing, my hair streaming
sideways and horizontally out of the window. I drive fast and the
fields lie motionless and the mirror works its way loose off the
bracket it is fixed to in the middle of the windscreen. Tons and tons
of snow have fallen here, moon upon moon has fallen. Birds, thunder and
cries have risen and fallen over the as-yet open expanses of fields.
Are they going to rise up against me now, relentlessly? The mirror
strikes me on the head before falling between the front seats, and the
tenor and baritone sing on while my car swerves onto the opposite lane.
For a moment I expect my life to pass in review, that I will again see
everything that has happened, separate and together, a bird's eye and
worm's eye view at one and the same time. I will relive happy times
with people long since dead, put my arms round a neck once more,
proudly tie my small girl's laces-everything in a single flash. But
then I manage to straighten the car up again and think luckily
everything went all right, the mirror could even have landed on the
floor and wedged itself between the brake pedal and the clutch.
I pick it up and hold it against my face. I can
see a small effusion of blood high up on my forehead and after a while
I feel dizzy and unfairly treated, as I always do when I am hurt or
frightened, so I take out a thermos and as I drink the hot honey water
I hear a car with a broken exhaust approaching at high speed. As it
passes, I see that the driver has put on an old man's mask in front of
his face. The hair of the mask is white and long and the cheeks are
sunken, the chin and the nose are oversized. I adjust the mirror I have
just put back and in it I see the mustard-yellow Toyota disappear
behind me. The bump on my forehead is swelling up, but the open-window
aria along with the duet have given my brain plenty of oxygen. The
honey drink has also raised my blood sugar, thus I make a U-turn and
set off after the masked driver.
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
Interior I
while I move quickly from one place to another I can find myself
thinking about the light pinewood floors that support me, humbly
serving with their recessed, outstretched planks and that it is the
generous vegetable kingdom which will also in future provide my meals,
simple but nutritious, and that I will keep the oak bed-my nighttime
vessel-and above all the colourless clothes I wear as a defense-my
linen skirt from which sounds are torn without ripping, it is related
to the finest fabrics, satin-silk-damask, is form-fitting and has
buttons down the front and I go down the corridor and into the waiting
room where there are photographs hanging on the walls and in one of
them several people can be seen in a forest, smiling and the floor is
hidden beneath a square-patterned carpet which I walk systematically
round for a while before the door opens behind me and a voice says my
name
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
Interior II
Inside the heated, cruciform church a man is lying on the floor. He is
wearing red mittens, is sleeping uneasily and kicks out with his legs
like a dog from time to time. He is lying on a stretch of carpet right
at the intersection of the cross and next to him is a table where a
collection box and lit candles have been placed. He is not dreaming of
anything he can later recall; it has been a long time since he did
that. His liver and lungs move gently and painfully inside his body,
and he snores irregularly and sometimes mumbles indistinctly. That
after half an hour of restless sleep he is going to get up and stuff
the collection box under his filthy quilted anorak comes as no
surprise, will hardly be remembered for any length of time. The event
will soon glide imperceptibly into the history and ecology of the
interior.
It would be natural to believe that the three
other visitors would light candles for him and put pieces of paper with
requests for intercession in the little basket that has been placed
there. But they do not do so. They think only of themselves and their
own worries, writing carefully on the small yellow pieces of paper:
"Pray that I get rid of my eczema" or : "Pray for my niece, who can't
stop gambling." One of them sits down heavily on a pew and looks at the
sleeping figure. Reckons that the walls are two metres thick, the man
is thirty years old, the church eight hundred and the total
displacement only two millimetres.
The sleeping man dreams and no one prays. Inside
his office the vicar is thinking of turkey while sitting at his desk.
He is thinking of starfish, terylene shirts and his children, but most
of all of turkey. The letter from the bishop lies unopened in front of
him, and he draws crosses and squiggles on the yellow envelope while he
thinks of apples and prunes and rosemary: the stuffing which is best
suited to turkey. The man lying at the intersection of the cross moves
uneasily once again, for he is dreaming again of something he will not
be able to remember; that he is small and is sitting in an oak tree
with ruddy cheeks and brown eyes and white milk-teeth and his mother is
singing beneath him and the meal is ready and the world stretches out
endlessly to all points of the compass.
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
Figuratively
I take a few steps and look up from the shoes of deep-blue Italian
leather into his face: it is light, unusual. If the shoes could only
tell, if the shoes could only tell of the hand that shaped them, of the
shoemaker and the shoemaker's ancestors. If the shoes could only tell
of the Etruscans; they are who I would most like to know something
about.
I hold my glass right, nod at F's unassailable
speech and have considerable problems knowing what to say. I squirm,
chatting about something to right and left-about decadence perhaps,
more quickly than usual: don't sound too intense, anything but that,
rather blas� and with my body language under control. It doesn't work.
So I am left standing there, alone at the edge of the group while I go
on looking at other people's shoes, the feet in the shoes, clad in
stockings shimmering, but what about the skin, what hasn't it been
through in the way of leather and pressure, water and cold? And the
underside of the feet; I know my own undersides, a soreness under the
soles, toes that feel squeezed even in my best shoes. It is autumn now,
ought we not rather be together collecting mushrooms, fetching in the
apples, cooking something over a fire? Shouldn't we rather have
scratched signs or geometrical figures in the hillside, run amongst the
trees? I stand in front of the rectangles formed by the pictures. They
keep me in position in the room with their inexplicable grip, and I
study F and G and M on the sly while they eat their canap�s and
converse and smoke. I long for them. F greedily gulps tobacco smoke
down into his lungs, leaning forwards towards the others who
gesticulate with their glasses and cigarettes, nodding their heads,
spectacled or with jewelry in their ears, rollnecks, white shirt
fronts, plaited long hair falling over a suit. They laugh quietly or
noisily, according to what is called for, point and wave. Fragments of
conversations reach me and M lifts at the same time his lower arms,
bares his wrists, makes gestures in the air in the direction of the
largest canvas. They all look friendly, have different-coloured eyes
that look out of heads in their own different ways they are prize
specimens and we belong to the same species, carry whole lives, have
known thousands of people. Nevertheless, we are weightless on the
parquet flooring, are merely an accumulation of chemical substances,
undetonated, waiting for the flare of death.
I turn round, look at his jacket, chosen with
care: "It suits me, my temperament and my position here in the world,"
he has thought, humbly perhaps considering the distinctiveness of this
article of clothing, its fit, the soft woven surfaces, the cool lining.
"With this single piece of attire I will reduce my
outer apparition, with its clear-cut lines this jacket will help
emphasize my inner qualities, indeed, my ability to love, provide
glimpses of the short but significant stays I have had under distant
skies and at the same time make me ordinary, bear witness to countless
hours spent around the stove, the bath tub, the iron in the house where
I am stationed now, where I find shelter."
I move around the room, awkward and preoccupied
though perfectly justified. I ask him a couple of questions, but he
does not reply in a way that can confirm my assumptions. And what about
the pictures? They hang there on the walls, have released me from their
rectangular grip and are either without titles or called 'Attack',
'Assault' or 'Coincidences' and I look at them with new eyes. They
forgive the eye, they convert surface into time, and I accept them
completely as landings in our extended and isolated lives.
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
Amongst all that is awake I
The map of the battle zones is redrawn, an emergency warning is put
out. A boy looks for his mother. An old man with a heart sweet and
blue-black as a ripe plum says that everyone who has come back from the
dead will be happy for the rest of his life, that he will return there.
Meanwhile the world will be unapproachable, a primeval mirror which we
gaze and gaze at without understanding. We are to be at home yet long
for home. We are to sit awake, eat compulsively, gulp in moonlight and
toss and turn because the simplest things seem to call for deep
absorption and patience. The pressure from the silent parts of the
memory will increase. It comes from the nursery, dry and fragile, and
we search through all our vocabularies but have been transplanted here;
rejected tissue, exhausted with watching, without replies and stretched
out between now and now but no longer on guard. We dream with open eyes
towards the days: hunger-speckled. Towards the nights: fat; silent;
deeply dark.
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
Amongst all that is awake II
I rely on the brain, I rely on it for this: that it controls the
chemistry which is always on the go with its whooshing and its sugary
mix. That it fixes enough oxygen for me to get along. That it keeps at
a distance the very worst in language, that which circulates bold and
unabashed inside its delicate mazes and binds together fat and protein
and words of wisdom. That it coldly rejects that which rises to the
unrecognizable, which concurs with everything people say: shopkeepers,
newsreaders, vicars. Invoked or not, the words do not be afraid come,
they filter in and out of my head like a small god. Then I am exposed
to it again, protect myself with small shields against all the noise,
gaze at the clouds, the moon, the blacked out ships-everything that
holds my tiny world together, and I put my trust in the brain's
intrepid agents: they shoot like marksmen, coolly smuggle in whatever
is in short supply, the usual: faith, hope, love.
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
Amongst all that is awake III
something has been razed to the ground again and we lie together in a
trance; you rounded off in sleep-white-skinned, sleeping against the
keen night while I scrape myself up again on the electric space which
has expanded into a kind of world space, all too vast for me, so I lie
still, stiff with troubles and memories, but trained in withstanding
low voltage, falls in temperature, stars that fall, repetitions upon
repetitions, for everything serves that which is to come: the new days
with foliage and gold-leaf and soaring flight, you who will wake of
your own accord and look at me
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
Amongst all that is awake IV
The brain: proud, amoeba-like.
On the back: happiness's high hump.
A twin takes me by the hand, accompanies me
towards death and indulgence and whole worlds
first through a garden of snakes
then through green waters.
There is singing there, but someone stops up our ears
and lashes us to the mast of reason.
Our neanderthal hearts beat so strongly.
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
Amongst all that is awake V
The table never sleeps, gathers us around it, four-legged,
three-coloured, upright as now, murmuring-dreams with open eyes,
lopped, chopped, it has been forest, it has been felled, sowed itself
anew, has waited for the seed, the flesh. The table knows the impotence
of logic, my elbows, lower arms, knows my changing manners, the
bottle-green dress, the salty meals, the ceremonies in the polar night;
flame, oil and water.
Words are spoken here, but the table does not
interpret the oracles too literally. It stays silent and holds itself
up, laid.
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
Amongst all that is awake VI
one night it is the slender writing, unassuming, sloping, leaning over
a dry page that I am suddenly full of tenderness for, its ambiguous
utterances, marshaled in orderly fashion pointing to the right, towards
the future, towards that which I can expect for myself and I am
waiting, attentive to its opposing nature and force when it takes over
the left hemisphere of the brain and corrects, trims, gives depth to
that which I thought flat, flattens the most pompous declarations
sentence by sentence, bears burdens, mixes together death and life,
brings a kilo of butter, two pounds of oxtails, three nectarines and I
wait obediently and it reels off the only thing I know anything about
now: blue peak, yellow tooth, white feather, warning mouth. It asks,
what is it that is important? and to be honest I feel it is best to
answer ignorabimus, which means: that we will never know
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
the night you were born
nothing was bowed then, everything stood upright and stiff and trees
outside welcomed bird after bird after bird, heavy water dropped from
the trees, a bird flew up, the invisible weight of a late summer fell,
the summer cuckoo was heard all night long, the night cauterized a
piece of ice, the spring coat of green and verdigris was already being
woven into the tree-trunks and complaint upon complaint was heard about
the indissoluble union of all things, and the night smouldered with its
low fire, constantly and like a blast furnace and maybe the sky itself
escaped its own desolate abyss then, for everything-yes, everything
finally loosened its bonds for us
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
night filter
from outer space the sun comes tumbling with
whole atmospheres, banners and brass ensembles in its train
but I've already been paid for, my crown has been bought
I hold it out like a child, although I feel pricking and cutting
the cells' intricate patterns are dispersed from their quiet, primeval
growth
explosions rip tissue to shreds and people fall everywhere
at the hands of strategists, for no reason
I gaze and gaze through the yellow night filter
wishful thinking takes over; perhaps they die honourably
in the struggle between good and evil?
I know nothing, am merely a particle
part of a gleaming trail of ice and gasses and divine hosts
(Translated from the Norwegian by John Irons)
Torild Warden�r
Aus der neuen Welt
The pulse is no longer at rest, the right elbow and lower arm of a
left-handed player begin to throb. The ears are freed, are on a journey
and there are cries of da capo.
The cellist gets up. Her taffeta dress swings as
she greets the audience. She holds her instrument in front of her and
her ash-blond hair falls down in front of her face, and the sound that
only hundreds of hands can produce sets the blood circulation going and
causes the faces of all the audience to flush. The one who is afflicted
with gout forgets his torments. The manic one floats on the applause
and will come and look for the first violinist behind the stage
afterwards, offer champagne and pleasure trips. Hands, lifted high,
cause programmes and pastilles to drop to the floor, fibres loosen from
fabrics, thoughts work away. People whisper Slavonic names they cannot
possibly have any natural knowledge of, and from the murky outer
reaches of the memory images emerge: of plains, of wide Czech rivers
and villages in autumn. Mighty theories of the world seem clearer. A
fable begins to take shape: of bringing together a blind person and an
invisible one. And dreams: of letting one's hands continue the
conductor's movements in a semaphoring of enthusiasm. More cries of da
capo, but those acclaimed give another deep bow and leave the hall for
the last time and the applause gradually dies down.
For everything is brought to an end. Everything.
Also the blood which will no longer coagulate when it is released but
become foul-smelling water.
Music on the other hand belongs to a different
regime and will continue to bring people clad in taffeta and silk to a
state of readiness, and lead to euphoria, to sweet confusion.
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
Mojacar
the place presents its trees
its explosives: pomegranates, eroded Moorish towers and bones
sand-burst, sun-burst land
and I full of trust but ignorant of this area
ask for the moment to remain detonated
that I may become one of time's many victims
be exiled to the harshest of regions
not escape, but unfold wings, be ochre-dazzled
acquire a patinated memory
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
Exit
|
Already the dark and endless ocean
of the end
is washing in through the breaches of our wounds
already the flood is upon us.
'The Ship of Death,' D.H.
Lawrence |
The last ages are a thing of the past and the stateliest of he-goats,
peacocks and lions come out of the ark two by two. The scorpions are
not depicted, they are outside the engraving and will continue their
lives under stones and bite livestock and humans. Perhaps be caught in
your scissor-claw, scorpion, within the reach of the deadly fandango of
your tail, be exposed to your small twin-lobed brain, your neurotoxin
and leave this world in the most violent of convulsions-melodramatic
and fanciful to be sure, for the last day of life probably lies
light-years in the future. In the meantime life will be a little cat on
the doorstep, will be lost in the bushes, a little cat bloated with
milk and oblivion and imperceptibly I may become a light in the scorpio
constellation, not die of poison, of a pulmonary disease where the
alveoli burst, not be denied free breathing in the crystal air of this
world, not die in deep distress or a frontal collision, of insidious
old age, by a knife, a rope round my neck, a stone that loosens from a
balustrade. But this deathly confusion while still alive has no cure,
only one exit and I see that the mountain is evasive, that the night
robs the day of everything-its paths, its intimacy-and I understand
that nothing can be three-dimensional and merry, that it can only with
difficulty be transferred to the small canvas the brain has stretched
out between birth and death, that the picture will forever be flat,
that we will never enter elysium so full of promise, arbours, space
behind space, that the verdigris green is perhaps but a shadow and the
graves with figures, quotations and white plastic flowers a mockery of
the ashes of the dead, which ought rather to have been scattered to the
four winds.
Afterwards the atoms will take over and reinstate
the troublesome soul, anchored this time in for example the almond
grove, not so favourable for impatient travelers, but for me who would
like to tarry a while beneath the slender tree-tops this can be the
best solution.
Then I would be prepared to go to the dogs, or
back to the fauna of the cave's darkness.
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
Miracle number seven
life is so confusing that several seasons that are of age have to be
appointed guardians; they stride through abandoned terrain and you and
I soon have twin-tissue, one eye in each forehead plus the senses;
convicts on islands of lava, guests in hanging gardens-turned away or
inwards they rise or fall heavily-the senses shred the days and nights
until the heart overflows again, old-fashioned, disgraced, incurable
over its banks, leaks down into the abdominal cavity and the tongue
lolls, waits wide and mild, the eyes gaze and see nothing, only the
familiar: weeds, the edges of the world's wounds, the enamel of the
sky, but I lower my boat into this lake where you are holding
flagellates and carp and are swimming around whole; I push my boat out
and the waves turn, the sun spins, everything changes and miracle
number seven occurs
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
Small circuit
"--and someone has arranged it in such a way for them that the sun is
first in the East, then the West, which is why ant and elk and fox
arrange things for themselves in what remains. Wisely, they divide the
forests between them and the forests let the cones call to the pine
needles that the pine needles are part of the great murmuring and that
the earth waits silent and fragrant. The earth cannot itself speak, but
it allows everything to grow freely and waits in happy expectation for
the carpet which will be spread out. In the forests the trees are the
great magicians, they work shoulder to shoulder, open and close their
crowns, send off seeds, catkins, bees, send sun down into the trunks,
fetch out resin and stand motionless for a hundred years. They make
places in the world, small and large castles, and light is the faithful
servant that gives the trees green to parade with, brown bark to wear,
the blue twilight to play with.
And what does light get in return? Well, all of
this, as in a mirror."
I close the book I have been reading from in a
whisper, look up.
The bed is empty, the child has gone, the night
has taken it, as I thought it would.
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
Offensive from the proletariat
It feels as if I had blue blood in my veins
I must belong to the aristocracy, I hunt foxes and hares
acquire land, hold court
take over the gallery and stand on my rights,
but Death the proletarian stalks me close
there is a crack: an accidental shot, it merely grazes
but the red blood betrays me, my outermost layer smarts
and nobility becomes exposed to a double danger
so I cover the wound quickly,
so easy it has been to escape
I think, retake my place
and although since then I only give meagre alms,
the heavy, wealthy future shrinks and shrinks.
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
here in the harbour
the vessel is old but in good shape, can of course go down out there,
but here in the harbour it floats like a swan some people say, has trim
lines that are commented on and admired and several people go on board,
wearing bandoliers and bearing letters of safe conduct
the harbour is big, the moorings secure, the crew
well-trained, but someone suddenly gives a stretch, yawning,
unexpectedly, ill at ease in his linen trousers under the flaming red
sky
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
Method I
I study the photographs closely, the depictions of my own face; it was
a small moon inspection, shiny as if nothing had happened. "If you
cannot speak, you must remain silent," is what was said, I can remember
that clearly, as well as "The world is beautiful on the outside, white
and green and red, but inside it is black in colour and as dark as
death." I grew up with such admonitions, but can no longer take them
seriously. Now I prefer to prick up my ears, and have become a
determined defender of the body's unruly chemistry. The supply of
sounds that insist on leaving my throat is released, overreaches itself
from time to time, its phonetic joints get dislocated, but my head can
be unaffected, can quickly heal once more, can think about traveling to
Warnem�nde. I don't know why, and perhaps I will carry it out without
having a reason. The Baltic, the great inland ocean, may well show
itself from its worst side, the spas will probably be dilapidated and
no one in these parts can recall Edvard Munch in his striped bathing
costume. The mornings are sure to be misty and pale and the coastline
will appear different from below than from the air. Brackish water,
obstinate residents, industry and deepfried food are sure to disappoint
me. I really don't know why I want to go there. Things hang together
differently than we imagine.
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
Method II
talk to the sun: do you remember, sun, when you burned a wound in a
left shoulder, when Plato laughed, when you lazily flecked yourself
under the oak tree, when a net was thrown over you and your sign was
hewn in the mountain? I do not expect any answer and the sun makes off
quickly westwards as if all this hung together in a fateful way. I make
myself as hard as flint, scatter coins, atoms around me, crunch away at
my small supply of sugar, go obediently to the room with acanthus
vines, scurry in fact as soon as I am ordered to carry out the job;
make white what should have been black, gild what should have been
blackened, keep anything blue
see the day fall into the trap and guard one's own
tissue
pay attention to the brief life
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
even the dervishes
the days balance inwards in us
long-suffering and airy with their odd
three-cornered hats askew, and we can't stop laughing
and fall and slide where it is crowded and slippery and gay
suddenly though they give a stretch and do arabic fly springs till
we regain our composure, we fall silent, hiccough and even
the dervishes stop spinning
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
From here, from inside the
husk of the world
That law and enigma follow each other I can see from here, from inside
the husk of the world, softly lined but slightly split open towards the
green majesty where summer messengers bring fresh reports to the mind:
fruit, seeds, a floor strewn with lilies.
Hearing over all hills, keen gaze sweeping over
the brown earth, stones, sugar cane and weeds. Here I wreak havoc with
iron constitution, with open mouth and choose you enlarged, and doubled
we will swiftly move, like Greek gods through time and space.
For life is in my claws, in my great greedy jaws
is an exultation; to be one flesh with the world's flesh, to drift
under the water or on its surface, to freely assume new names:
Luz, Deepdark, Ganymede and Tintinnabulum.
Somewhere far ahead; a tract, a silver string
broken and we are waiting in a small, compact queue, but before that,
time will stream endlessly on.
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
Ambush, December
High and reeling is the winter,
it fells violet mountains and causes voices to be raised.
Has the bondage of gravity finally been broken?
Please do not answer rhetorical questions, interrupt me now, early on
for the day so short, only the wallpaper blooms, thought is worn down,
coronary arteries, icebergs and oxygen flow freely.
All roads that lead to and from here are pitfalls.
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
Training to gallop
Outside a high wall the countryside spreads out; I want to go out to it;
fully equipped, like a centaur.
I capture the day, it is a restless full-blood, rears up
and suddenly the future is there trying to tame me,
but I am four-legged, quick-witted, get up speed and
propeller shafts, internal combustion engines and steel hull send me
off
on a transatlantic trip
to continents, grass-heavy with horses.
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
From the circus ring
I lie like a foetus, breathe in carbon dioxide, mutter about a flag,
about bridge no. 87 and other traffic hubs. I dream about the
metaphysics of animals; the goat knows all the stories from time
immemorial, but holds its tongue, and in the circus ring a Norwegian
wolf makes an appearance. Someone has crushed glass, it's the fakirs
who have done so, they're in need of a new bed, or perhaps it's the
angels-always trying to outshine. I wake up surrounded by walls,
fabrics, woodwork and the day takes over, communicating in its quick,
singing dialect:
while you live a
woven fabric is stretched out, knotted in a tight braid of hemp, silk
and Gordian knots, a net for you to fall into, to lie in-for you loosen
from heavy trapezes, are in motion, dazzled, in brief flight, only
connected by each day's wedding
I make a quick note of this, ruminating on the sword that is to cut
these Gordian knots. There's a sound of rustling paper, you wake up and
begin to tell of your childhood, something about a liveried chauffeur.
I say I have to get up and do something useful, collect firewood for
example, but I keep on lying there, continuing to speak singly and see
double.
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
After Hamelin
We pretend we can have everything we ask for:
Whipped cream and vanilla on the tongue
day-shelter, brief night-watches
a capacity to break into each other's lives fearlessly
a good government in power behind the forehead
days and nights protected beneath a fence of hissing anti-time.
Suddenly, though, evening is here.
We follow the pied-piper's flute
along the mossy paths away from the village.
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
It is August
It is August, I study the map of Spain, the mountain ranges, the great
dried-out rivers, the region of windmills, the border areas, the rugged
Estramadura.
I look at the illustration Feeding the
birds in winter. The crows, the nuthatches and the sparrows
are shown, although faded. I study in general everything hanging on the
walls in my light-filled room; faces and landscapes are framed as if
that could help.
A long time has soon passed since I came into the
world. I try to recreate this event, patient as a builder of
model-planes; was it a milky-white and bloody battle, as in tai chi; or
underwater pressure, incomprehensible, forgotten? I am full of guesses
now, though deprived of all memories of emotions, stress and farewells.
I sit in my chair until it becomes dark, it is
august, the sound of a dog carries, I regret the fact that logic is not
my strong point. The dog approaches, snaps at me, is wiry and shaggy
and in the prime of life. It noses its way forward, sniffs the air:
Who's there? And I, who am of prime flesh, reply: nobody, nobody. I've
got that from Odysseus, and feel it is as good an answer as any. I
cover my throat, advance full of over-confidence and call out gently so
as to calm it, throw a few bones out to keep it at a distance. Don't
you do that I laugh at it, as if it was going to assault me with
caresses, then a sharp warning comes from me: lie down, sit!-but it is
unpredictable, does not lie on its back as I hope, but has a bite at
me. For it is the dog of dogs, it has decked itself out in the skin of
the future and I am its meek, certain prey.
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
Time for presents
I live most graciously and magnificently, and at the turn of the year
it is time for presents-presents to Pater O, to Peter Pan, to mother,
to the kind grand uncles and all my friends, we will live for ever.
I give them the presents of eternity: a wild
beast's pelt, strong green lianas, I have tamed a little time for them,
I light candles, bind the lianas, I read the texts, pause at the first
paragraph, third line, chase off the hounds of hell, everything that
can torment them, scatter magic words and devout prayers around me.
I take a zigzag route through the town, screw up
my courage, look at them with something that must resemble the look of
the gods, gentle, thunderingly gentle but death holds sway, offers the
anti-present, the unacceptable, that which creates debt.
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
This ideal moment
Happiness waits-elevated and grave.
I go to mass: Omnia vincit amor, et nos cedamus amori.
An adventurous life awaits me.
I do not waver in the face of it.
Someone says: Wait and see, but I do not wait.
I take the name Roslin.
Follow the guiding star.
Gain master energy.
Float freely in the world's palate.
Strange. This ideal moment persists.
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
From now on
Against the wall the stove stands and decides. On the floor the chairs
rule, upholstered, unruffled. I stand at the window and ask: Where are
the dead and their souls?
A connection is loose. It can be reason that is
roaming around with its gleaming, crazy look. I become highly
demanding, insist on a defense being put up round me and my name, that
burdens be taken from me, that the years that are to come be
lengthened, that midsummer be stretched out to infinity, that a
staircase is to lead away from here-upwards and upwards. Fortunately,
you come in at the right moment and say that, despite everything, we
have ready abilities, and that the days from now on will be divided
into three delightful zones.
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
Collection
1. A portrait of Giorgio De Chirico,
I have drawn it on the basis of a photograph.
His ear lobes were unusually large, presumably a manifestation of self-
healing abilities.
2. Dice of bone and marble,
showing signs of use, have been cast across an oak table in front of
the fire in the room where the members of the Hanseatic League tramped
around in their primitive leather boots and the women prayed: "Mikael,
Peter, Johannes, Andreas, Lavrans, Thomas, Olav, Klemet and Nikolas.
All holy men, take good care of me by day and by night, my life and my
soul."
3. two rolls of linoleum,
what am I to do with them? Difficult to answer, I can't bring myself to
throw them out at any rate. The floors of the house have already got
carpets, woodwork, are exposed to invisible wear. Perhaps I will remove
the Turkish carpet with its imported cockroaches, admittedly it has a
distinctive light yellow colour woven into it, but it collects dust; a
nest of textile fibres, mites, hairs and skin cells. But it's out of
the question, I bought it off Leila. She has woven it and sold it to me.
4. Mirrors were rare and expensive in the Middle
Ages. Now they hang about the house and I often look into them, but not
particularly inquiringly. They cause the rooms to expand, though only
apparently and if I should remain standing in front of them, I do not
see my own mirror image but normally veiled images of North African
landscapes, mirages, sand, water beneath the soil.
5. The lupine seed rattle quietly.
Have lain in an envelope for three years. I had forgotten them. They
were fetched from the dry slopes along the windswept coast. An orange
container ship foamed its way forward across the horizon, you sat in
the car and sang; there was so much oxygen there that we could have
ascended into the air.
6. The heavy Buddha sculpture of stone.
Whoof. It was a dead weight to move around.
7. The washing machine,
white, chaste, masculine, faithful.
8. The same age as me, the tree.
I envy the tree. It is to guard the house. It lets everyone in, but
keeps Astrea and Leda in their places, knows about the empty bird's
eggs, the crow feathers, the steel pens, hundreds of handwritten
letters, the films: Kodak 1958, Fujicolor 1979-and the garden party
last year, admittedly not in the picture.
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
fugue
november is unlocked
out gushes light, tropical rain, guts
summer's brittle life stipples into colourless winter
some poultry is hung upside down, a frozen piece of beef thaws slowly
inside the house style upon style prevails
false steps, unctuous outbursts
some lace here, a piece of tarnished silver there
the foremothers rule in the corners, a warm mezzo soprano entertains
outside the light becomes more and more drab, clings brazenly to the
house
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
Universe I
I am firm and fluid, my wrists are smooth and without blemish, my body
a heavy galaxy with fusions, tall skies, supernovas and arms and legs
that are still bent at forty-five degree angles, I go here and there
for other directions are without names, a shame and I am motionless for
several light years, but the sun like me has had so many experiences,
it breaks through once more and I stretch my muscles, paint a bit with
yellow and zinc white and daydream again of pepper bushes and flamenco
dancing, of you and me
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
(Translated from the Norwegian by John Irons)
Torild Warden�r
We begin to stammer
We leaf through 'Das ewige Antlitz,' a book with photographs of death
masks.
The features of Napoleon and Beethoven in
particular soften the unease roused by the other photos, it looks
perhaps as if for them the battle has been won.
We are visibly relieved, we sit in the shade of
the gingko tree and talk to each other in our mixed languages: about
the course of the river in a bird's eye view, certain unhappy people
who take revenge for the strangest of reasons, glistening slate and
spotted orchis.
We have surrendered to the heat and the strange
landscape gazes at us.
We sit in the shades, close to a bulwark of light,
red sand and lizards, and the weight of childhood causes our feet to
swell, makes great gaps in memory and we begin to stammer about the
snow-clad mountains back home, the beetle in the bird's beak, the sea
that washes and washes.
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
danger of explosion
I am standing out on the headland and the air runs amok within me, I
let it wreak havoc, the smooth mountain supports me, it is spring, I
cannot stop it, chlorophyll and light are all-powerful, there is a
great danger of explosion and my senses run off, full of joy, squealing
they are bawling away today, pile up massive receivers for the
whispering sea, the sea birds wheel overhead, dive, grab hearing in
their orange jabbering beaks and fly off, higher and higher
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
The drift of days and nights
To constantly have the specific weight of days and nights hanging round
my neck like a heavy fine stone is a blessing for me-I who otherwise
would have been airborne.
Nighttime is best, when the star-stitches loosen,
enabling the flying carpet to land.
It is deep-blue lying and dreaming on after the
day's toil-and deserved, for the day-scalpel cuts out all sorts of
rubbish, excises dreams; they are stuffed into the cabinet that is
already full of palefaces, shellfish, catalogues, tirades and
disconnected words such as hawk upon hawk, fire upon fire. In the
morning, when the forces of law and order lead me away, I do not
exactly protest, but am not a time-saver either, for the whole day is
spent earning a living, holding on to my companions, calming
disturbances, tidying up in the cabinet.
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
you and the tiny heart siskin
For
Elise
in you looms the mountain
the primeval shadows cast,
but the tiny fluttering heart siskin
and you yourself are young and rising
the valley beneath you is full of light
of Schubert songs and golden crops
and you're in the midst of the gold-dust day
in the midst of the celebrated season, the best century
and you're borne so easily in the warm wind
soar high with the tiny heart siskin
and forget you have a body
forget the mountain has a raven
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
Torild Warden�r
we upset the deep-sea sounder
we are conceived several times
we have lived long, our cells have been through explosions
have multiplied night-dark, have leaked light, phosphorus
there are crashes as in thunderstorms, everything
comes to an end, death waits anew and anew and assumes the form of a
fish or hunter or water and we upset the deep-sea sounder in the
commotion, but it has no consequences for us, everything only appears
yet clearer: our deep-red interior, the alleged atmosphere, unknown
languages that sound their words against sandy sea-beds, against our
finely tooled brains
(Translated from the Norwegian by John
Irons)
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