Day 11

I missed posting yesterday, but I wrote this:

My time stuck in my first watch
My spring stuck in my first pair of shoes
My words dry in my first pen
My first pen - I won't find it again

My first kiss lost to your lips
I lost my head, but if you drowned in me
It must mean you're dead.
You're dead, I'm alive.

***

I was never a poetry kind of person. I don't think that means much more than that I never spent much effort on it once I got past my emo poetry-writing years, I often wish I was better at it. Hopefully I'll find the incentive to work more on it. As for this, it sounds emo as hell to me, it probably is. It's mostly a brain fart and bear no relation to anything actually going on in my life, I'm just trying to play around with words and see if I can do what all good poets do: Express old thoughts with new words. Old truths with new angles.

Today's (Day 12) actual entry should hopefully appear later in the day.

Day 2

Poetry? Oh no! Say it isn't so!

I don't mind that all the roads have been trod,
long before me, and by greater men than me.
That's okay, I don't mind. After all,
I've never been, and I never trusted great men.

I'll walk in their tracks, my lamp kept black.
I will follow my nose, wherever it goes
with my feet to keep me going, and
the light of my eyes to shine me
on the way.

A stab at translating

Try as I might, I can find no translation of Pär Lagerkvist's poems on the internet. At best, I've been able to scrounge up the two first lines of my favourite one in his wikipedia article.

Naturally, that means I have to make a botched attempt of translating it myself. So here goes. Swedish version at the end for the curious.

Untitled (1916)

Anguish, anguish is my heritage
my wounded throat,
my heart's cry in the world.
Now stiffens the lathery sky
In the night's heavy hand,
now the forests rises
and the stiff heights
so harshly against the sky's
abortive vault.
How harsh it is,
how stiff, how sable, how still!

I grope my way through this dusky room,
I feel the cliff's harsh edge against my fingers
I tear my upstretched hands
to blood against the cloud's frozen tatters.

Oh, my nails I tear from my fingers,
my hands I claw marred, wounded
against the cliffs and darkened woods,
against the sky's black iron
and against the bitter earth!

Anguish, anguish is my heritage, my wounded throat, my heart's cry in the world.

***

Ångest, ångest är min arvedel,
min strupes sår,
mitt hjärtas skri i världen.
Nu styvnar löddrig sky
i nattens grova hand,
nu stiga skogarna
och stela höjder
så kargt mot himmelens
förkrympta valv.
Hur hårt är allt,
hur stelnat, svart och stilla!

Jag famlar kring i detta dunkla rum,
jag känner klippans vassa kant mot mina fingrar
jag river mina uppåtsträckta händer
till blods mot molnens frusna trasor.

Ack, mina naglar sliter jag från fingrarna,
mina händer river jag såriga,ömma
mot berg och mörknad skog,
mot himlens svarta järn
och mot den kalla jorden!

Ångest, ångest är min arvedel, min strupes sår, mitt hjärtas skri i världen.