2015-12-25

Kjell Espmark, The Creation ( Part II) Translated by Göran Malmqvist

Hades
Hades seems to be personal,
tailored to each one.
In mine you can’t get up ─
the blackness that here is the word for heaven
presses against the ground. Myself,
I’m stuck to it like a foil.
Not even hope can raise itself one inch above the ground.
If I were rowed here from the city I governed
the boat must have been thin like a playing-card
and the ferryman flat like the knight of clubs.

My crime was to have torn down the old town
as if I’d torn off a piece of history!
What I remember is a carved gate from the baroque
and a staircase with painted windows─ a scene
with the Virgin and her helpless knight.
I also seem to remember a sluice between the waters
shaped like a clover-leaf.
All was crushed by merry excavators
which also took with them the rest of memory.

Here is neither height nor depth. In spite of this
my task is to design the new city
Without houses capable of being raised from the ground,
yes, without being able to lift the hands to do the design.
A travesty of Creation!

I am attacked by shadows yapping in the surface
with my grey blood between their teeth.
They demand an explanation from me.
What can I explain? All I ever knew
has been levelled with the ground.
Here isn’t deep enough even for repentance.

Exam

So I’m a “type” that has aroused interest
at the Institute of Racial Biology,
and can be read between the lines in the rapport:
“Types partly mixed with the Lapps. Espnäs.”
My father’s cousin Karl-Erik stands in one photo
together with the brothers Per and Jöns Herbert
in their Sunday Best, someone helped him with the tie.
Sleeves and trousers embarrassingly short
and the jacket too tight around the buttons
in the nervousness before the examination.
Are the trouser-creases Aryan enough?
The brothers stand in straw of the cow-house
against a whitewashed wall
that associates with Holocaust
looking seriously into our time.
The year is 1931
and history is just about to take a great step backward.

Father stands outside the picture, posthumously frightened
by his suddenly impure racial features.

Myself, I’m shaken by the diagnosis as such,
a tiny creature caught in the racial biologist
Herman Lundborg’s magnifying glass.
The blinking steel blue eye
on the other side of the lens hesitates
whether I should be shoved back into the Lapp tent
or be admitted into the next stage
of the Millenial Plan.

Father’s cousins stand at attention
while the photo is aging around them.
They wait for the decision of the Institute.
As if they just had been unloaded on the platform.

The Day of Wrath

This is the Day of Wrath
And the century has begun to dissolve into ashes.
Surely we had expected that the neglected God
would send his carpenter’s plane of fire over the world,
not that our own wrath
would turn against us.

Cannae, Waterloo and Verdun
are cursing remnants
of ribs and bones that never fail.
Also wagging jaw-bones demanding revenge.
Wrath gives strength to the jerky fragments of bone,
exhorts fibulae and knuckles to rally.
We have long waited for the signal
that Law has resigned
and once again makes anything possible.

And now, at the sound of the Assyrian horn
we dead raise ourselves, clattering,
warped skeletons, tottering in a fit of dizziness,
trying to make the helmet stay on the cranium.
We all long to get our teeth into the others’ throat,
the throat that the last war bit off,
and tear out the others’ hearts,
hearts that have been dust for centuries.
But first we shall slay those among us who are unsure,
those who recognize their anguish
in the empty eye-sockets of the enemy.
Then we can reduce those cities to ashes
which have for long been ashes.
And that is now
and a thousand years ago.

Credo

Instead of seeking The Great Vision
you ought to engage in the pleasure of begetting
and then walk with your woman in the moonlight
listening to the one lute
and feeling the cool air brush your neck,
That advice you got from me, Li Zhi,
who once tried to teach you to write
as the hare skips and the falcon strikes,
and not to be quoted.
Don’t try to defend yourself arguing
that many wish to burn your books.
The real text
burns while the hand writes ─
the paper curls with blackening edges.

On the utmost tip of a hair
where you unseen would build your cottage
you found an academy.
I’m disappointed in you.
Have you forgotten me who was thrown in gaol
for my admonishing constant doubt,
with the moon my sole friend
and a razor my conclusion.

So now I wish to teach you to live
as the bluebottle sneers at the swatter
and the ageless cockroach
takes a shortcut through the fire.
I have been dead far too long
to respect what you call deletion.
What I shout in your deaf ear
is that mortals exist. You complain
that you have seen her smolder and curl
with blackening, bubbling skin.
Yes, you whisper you have seen her turn into ashes.
Then I will tell you what I have understood
of all I’m supposed to have taught:
What is man in man
can’t burn.


Dream

I thought I went to bed with a wench,
though turning my back on her.
She grabbed my cock which grew large.
I turned against her, put it on,
it bent, but managed to enter. He is long, she said,
I thought a child may be made from this. And came ─
as if a rocket had exploded above me,
in a rain of sparks.
She bit my earlobe and whispered: Swedenborg,
which greatly scared me,
especially as my father passed by in his episcopal vestment,
with a dark air, not saying a word.

Meaning: I have moved in the society of science
and proudly added my name to it.

My arrogance caught naked
with dripping cock
dressed only in its soiled shirt.

Noticed at once how the feet stank
and the legs itched, bitten by bedbugs.
Couldn’t even find my wig.
God pressed down my face into the shit
as when you teach manners to a pup.

Now I understand another dream a while ago.
About the book I redeemed with nine farthings.
All pages in it were blank, but shone,
as if angels’ faces wished to get out.
It seems that a larger text is demanded of me
like the Bible version of the origin of the world
pointing to a richer creation.
The alleys and sheds in this block, so hard to interpret,
wish to become a city of glimmering meaning.
The whimpering unborn seek me.
And the empty heaven begs for color.

Evening on the sixth day

The powers’ demand for letting me meet
my beloved in the world of shadows
was that I gave up myself, piece
by piece, in the staircase down through the darkness.
The first step got my hair─
it lit me a few cubits on my way.
Even my face, which I gave up,
spread a shimmer, scarred by smallpox.
The eyes I could part with
as darkness grew thick around me.
One step got my heart, swollen with weeping,
another step my withering womb.
Hardest of all was to part with the memories;
picture upon picture flashed from pain.
At last I was only a shadow among shadows.
But two treasures I had kept
in a fold of shade in the dress of shade:
the itching memory spelled love
and a grey drop of my blood.

I did find my beloved’s shadow
but it went groping over me
without recognition.
Then I smeared the drop of blood on his lips,
the darker shade that was his lips,
and he was amazed.

My hand that was no longer hand
caught his hand which was still a shadow.
And we began to climb upwards in the dark.
With every step we created 
a piece of the other ─ a familiar contour,
the eyes that once had chosen the other.
Yes, fondled forth genitals knowing one another.

Near the light at the end of the staircase
when we had puffed breath into one another
we remained standing on a step
that had something to say to us:
hold back your image of the other 
and let the other be the other.
Amazed we checked ourselves,
before creation had been completed,
in order to restrain the demand to recognize.
And there was evening the sixth day.

The Answer

We who sprayed the railway embankment
moved slowly along the rail
with the containers on our backs─
blue spots among rosebay and meadowsweet.
But the fluid that swapped a piece of July
for a better view for the traffic
was deadly for us humans.
With each sweep of the nozzle
our life sank one millimeter within us.
I saw heaven and its black clouds
straight through my comrades!
When my hand sought my face
the fingers grabbed empty air.
You who have heard about us perhaps know:
Did the railway, the people’s own railway,
take care of our families?

There is an exhausted answer
but now to quite another question.
What sank in you
has been forced to sink also in us
who lay rail-tracks here in East Africa.
We have used most of our breath
to impregnate the sleepers.
And every echo of the sledgehammer tells
how we have knocked down our lives
month by month
as nails to fasten the rail.
This embankment on its way toward the grey horizon
knows that we have created a fragment of future.
What was left of our chest and feet
our families had to take care of.


2015-12-03

Kjell Espmark, The Creation Translated by Göran Malmqvist (part 1)


The Word

When you moved farther
out among terrifying constellations
and left me on this side of the Jordan
you took a half-finished homeland with you.

I became a heap of lost bones
gnawed by vultures and hyenas
and burnished by wind and sand.
But what remained of my rib-cage
retained what the akward one understood.

And what really is myself in me
didn’t give up. This lost flickering flame
has roved on dusty roads,
being neither dust nor roads,
to seek you, my kin.

I wanted to lay my old-fashioned word
in your dreams, without awaking you, whispering:
Creation is not yet finished.

And it’s you it’s hoping for.
I imagine how you turn in your sleep
your hands grasping empty air
as if defending themselves.

But why do so many of you lie,
helplessly pressed against one another,
on some kind of beds made of filthy boards?
And why are you so emaciated?

I want to spread in you what I’ve understood
like rings on sleeping water.
But why is the water so dark?
And why does it quiver all the time?

Arioso

Turned into flames I dashed out
from the library in Alexandria.
The nine rolls of papyrus that had contained me,
still crackling of jilted love,
were turned into sparks and rising flakes.
And I died a second time.

Fragments of me were left as quotes.
My word for heaven grabbed a learned pedant
clinging firmly to his desk
when the blue suddenly deepened into blue.
A pronoun used in a strange way
bewitched a grammarian. The word
written in gold and green ─ a beetle!─
opened its wing sheats and rose
to carry its context through centuries.

Other fragments of what was Sappho
were left as flakes on those who passed by
“to call back the one she long had loved”.

Words that scorched the wind: What did you want with me
when I was split like a log of wood,
“shaking from desire and suddenly weak-kneed”?

Yes, my intoxication remained,
spared by fire, its brother,
and found refuge with a lonely woman
in the green light from an oil lamp
soughing in the evening among startled crane-flies.
She scribbled poetry on torn-off scraps of paper.
Looked up when someone shouted: Emily!
─ for a moment defenceless.
Then my dizziness flew into her head.
The ringing in what were my ears 
took place in hers
and I sweated in her skin
at the thought of the loved one.
I may not have understood her language
and the pain from the kidneys wasn’t mine.
But her shiver required no translation,
nor did the sudden blush
that was felt far down the neck.

The power of signs

You know me as Yan Zhenqing,
Master of the upright brush.
But the emperor had another use for me.
Rebellions tore the country apart at that time.
Sons took their knives to their fathers
and women were torn open like chickens.
The reality we had inherited fell apart.
Yes, even the moon was burnt to ashes.

My courage during the resistance
had made me a minister.
But my straight criticism of corrupt courtiers
aroused the anger of the highest councilor.
He sent me to reprove
Li Xili, leader of the rebellion,
and pay with my life for that affront.

But Li wanted to buy me over. It’s told
that he lit a pyre in the yard,
threatening to throw a no into the fire.
And that I gained his respect
when I voluntarily approached the flames.
What really happened memory wishes to erase.

My style which I found when after fifty 
will tell you all about this.
Soft is the beginning and end of a brush stroke,
soft like the woman I had long loved.
But the sign has a warrior’s body.
Only thus, script is capable of intervening.

I was now lodged on the tip of my bowing blade of grass.
The last night in the Longxing monastery
I wrote, waiting for the executioner.
The straight, matter-of-fact script
restored the meanings of plundered words.
It forced the ashes again to become moon,
filled the pond to serve as its mirror
and returned his arms to Buddha in the monastery.
Those who came to strangle me
were frightened by the power of the signs.

The Sibyl

My one wish is to be allowed to die.
My wish was denied, since the beginning of time.
I hang here, upside-down, in my bottle
like a sleeping bat in its cave.
Since I’ve been at it so long
I’m supposed to know the future─
that’s a logic as topsy-turvy as the skirt
falling over my breast
exposing my withering genitals to the world.
It’s the past being written on my skin.

I’ve seen my children and grandchildren die
and their grandchildren’s grandchildren disappear.
My eyes have been dried out by tears
into pellets of senseless bone. And my heart
─ it’s of wrinkled leather─
beats only once a minute.

Helpless I perceive how the centuries pass
drowned in blood and excrement
and shivering from the terror of children.
The world seems to have the same brown color
as my body and my worn skirt
as if I were part of its creation.

Yes, perhaps you are all my children,
I can’t remember. I hear you suffer
but can’t lift a finger 
in your defence. All I dare hope for
is that sweat and tears shall mist over the glass
so that I shall be spared the sight.
If only this persistent tone,
so high that only I and the dogs can hear it,
wouldn’t torment me with its hope.

Chorus

We were the ones that were blinded early,
who sought out the Sun’s yard
to steal his horses for you
but were caught in the stable door─
we still stagger, our arms of darkness
raised to protect our scorched eyes.
Remember us.

We were the slaves that rose
against the shining helmets
covering but greed under the metal.
We tried to rescue women and children,
stooping under centuries of stone,
stone for the building of the victors’ history.
And we were nailed on cross upon cross
along the road from Rome to Capua.
Remember us.

It was we who harvested cotton in the fields
even at night after we had fallen
and gave you the privilege to dream.
Our faces are a piece of the darkness.
Remember us.

We are those who were strangled by steel wire
after a failed attempt to assassinate the dictator
but had time to breathe our hope into you.
Remember us.

We are the people without a name ─
it’s you who have borrowed our names.
Nor do we have any graves ─
it’s you who have the right to die.

Evangelist

A haze lit by the sun
moves across the Sea of Galilee
where we stand in the leaning boat,
slowly, slowly drawing up our net.
The rail is dangerously close to the water
when the floundering glitter tears across the floor.
No, this isn’t fish─ it’s the souls of human beings.

This is the hard year 1749
when my sight gets lost among the pains.
It’s then I gather all my catch,
my whims and the glittering thoughts of others,
sighs, memories and scaly wrath
into a mass groping for the coat-tail
of him whom, for lack of words, we call God.

I know that when I’ve ceased breathing
there will be no notices in the German papers.
And later on, when tormented consciences
seek me they shall find no Bach.

Friends who poured through our home
kept nagging me: Write down your memories.
Didn’t they understand that I had done that?
All I have been and all I remember
have been written into my score
like a heart placed in the floor of the cathedral,
like a chest joint to its vault.

You wish to press upon me an instructive biography,
a body with a stiff wig
and features of pretentious stone.
Do call me the fifth evangelist if you like,
but let me keep modest measurements ─
you forget that we were simple fishermen
in the service of him that came over the water
breathing  forth a fair world.
And the lambs running in front of my legs
were ordinary lambs with earthly droppings.

My seven exact tones subjugated
a chaos of noises and irresolution.
Their strictness is close to dance
and cancels any obedience
to far too human authorities.

It’s getting dark.

The map of Europe is stained with blood.
But the cello insists. 
And the chorus creates the order
that the world has bungled.

The Chain

I was the local know-all
that they laughed at on the church green,
those wise men who sit so straddle-legged in life.
But believing that one has a grip on reality
is like carving a notch in the rail
to mark where the pike was biting.

I was good at Latin. And while sneering at me
the village clubbed together a sum
to let me study at the university in Jena.
There I was even allowed to take a doctorate 
and defend the thesis that man exists
in spite of all signs to the contrary.
I possibly failed.
I don’t want to remember, a year of despair,
holding forth that man is man’s wolf. 

But then I happened to listen to a philosopher,
Schelling was his name, and I understood at once
our task in this world. The Bible is wrong ─
Creation isn’t finished yet. Needs help.
It’s full of traces waiting for steps,
trains of thought that never have been followed.
Heaven is still being hammered out.
And history, I was taught, is a chain
to which we are supposed to add link upon link.

Even in this village we can help the blacksmith
to forge a link containing our love
to add to that which begins in the haze.
My knowledge makes me serve as a kind of secretary
with a home-made shorthand
to catch the ambiguities of the clouds,
the portents of the flights of birds
and the growing light in man’s eyes.
It’s only that my clumsy peasant hands
find it hard to catch up.