Finn Printz-Påhlson 

Translator

Healthy metallic the pigeons

glisten in shadows of woods.

Fragile though richly so coloured,

billowing shawls of pure silk.

Slender and vividly red their

claws are so perfectly female,

also exquisite on males.

Heart beats disguised by apparel,

welcome so lithely as snakes,

sea colour high in the pine trees,

look for me after some decades.

Velvety sounds for the moment,

ringing on miniature tongues,

finding their greatness in memories.

Pigeons in sheltering spruces,

haziness turns into clearness,

in twilight the amber eyes piercing.

Also when lying there slain,

a falcon’s remains in the glades,

unruly opal grey fragments

burdened by weights due to wind,

with temple-like forest surrounding.

Wings are mirrored in rivers,

embellish the light and the air.

Encountering you who condemned

polluted not copious greenery,

foliage that has in one’s eye,

chased along allies and sidewalks,

scraping irregular circles

with feet that are bony deformities,

renders the picture of innocence,

well-rinsed in grey clustered grapes,

trampled alongside the street.

Traces as if made by Leonardo,

heels that have quickly retouched.

Soot blackened pigeons turn reddish,

openly obscene as in death.

Pigeons that ridiculously totter

on track from fodder to danger;

mocked and bedraggled clowns

assenting far beyond cowardice,

more locked than a candle’s flame.

Still in the pigeon’s blue loftiness,

cast in a statue’s bold shadow,

or wings that are fully stretched

as Symbols of ethereal dreams,

the notion of once having

resided in a world that has value,

nourished by a forest’s dominions.

Cynical minds will still claim that

they’re just a pest and a vermin –

could pigeons by chance ever fly?

If you perhaps were to see how

sickly and ruffled they perch,

sullen in rubbish-filled gutters,

alongside their eggs are so putrid,

confronted you nakedly stand

in places where matt poetry glows

remembering all that is wasted.

I see you at times, Asli, in the shape of a dog.
The spell – the curse still lingers on.
With old wounds, new ones freshly dried,
worn out and weary, and your body
in its final intractable cat’s life;
a bewitched talking dog or one of  those
poison green-eyed cats of the night.
Then you rise, your golden brown calf
reaches out and slenderly your shoulders
fill out the gold embroidered blouse.
Your voice it dreams -– as Scheherazade’s
the words ooze forth in woozy sleep
in an even mellow stream of  well-to-be.
Untroubled you continue into the dawn light,
while Scheherazade hastily fell silent to the sound
of sleeping snuffles from Shahryar.
I myself have only my deviant dictation
cowering over cotton-white writing paper.
Against the snoring old man’s hatred
(I call him old although he’s our age)
I’ve nothing to oppose, nor towards death
that hounds you from within, or the violence
it’s born with. For all I make myself blind,
and this new boundless helplessness of mine
before your heart and reddish wounds
destroy me, Oh generous story-teller!,
and echoes empty all the way throughout
the years, back to times when I was nothing.

My time is now, my place is here,
the password long since been spoken –
no longer do I need to seek for it.
But as a wing will try to test its flight
my eye has difficulty finding focus.
It’s injured in all kinds of ways,
by mediocre and unsightly things,
on cornered squares and in restricted space;
scrapes and sprains and hits the roof,
blinking slightly in its blackened eye
until it -– bend now backwards! -– rises up
and finds its freedom in a widened room
as if this eye had planned to annex it.
There is a limit to what one manages
of stuffiness and stifled breathing.
How easy to lose one’s creative drive
and crouch despite the sky above does
incessantly generate new fresh frescoes
with clouds so airy white and monumental
that they only leave behind small traces
of the blue that inaugurated the place.
My eye must die in your apartments,
it’s getting grey, the world is fading,
and only flashes in the lighter’s flame,
the moment before the smoke’s new greyness.
The ceiling’s low, the cage is cramped;
a sudden glance, with nothing to lose.
It’s a crime you know, to turn one’s back
but I fled, to nature’s lap,
to Irish rivers and Norwegian hills
and drowned myself in rapture wild;
the sound of jubilance, my head
was swept along on frothy waves.
But as rebellion’s seeking in, and digs
it’s heels, or takes off into the woods,
it must loyally one day return to fight.
I’m all cracked up, but my nut is ripe,
it has brightened, sweet and golden,
its shell no longer needs to hold it.
I’m feeling what I’ve always felt,
how the forces that strive to unmake
exactly measure up to those that create,
and if there was to be a task for me,
it should be a one to fit a mould
of sorts around a gloomy void.
I bring the contours back to twilight,
from stubble blue I’d like to make
a colour print so time preserves,
a weight for the floating, fillings
for the vacuous and hollow.
From these dreary quarters a draughtsman
might now and then appear, although how rare,
who with a sharpened pencil point
can lend the skies a bold relief
and, line for line, recreate the space,
and where at dusk – and godlike –
the bright blue air fills in with ease.