Silent Night
Translated by Joe Martin
The night tonight is holy.
Something will happen.
It is not simply snow that will
Come down from heaven.
The night tonight is holy.
Someone will die tonight.
New-sown and fearful and faint
Heaven is spawning in ice
where it's shining and smooth on the street.
The night tonight is holy.
Someone will be born tonight.
Our dark, freezing globe
Is not forsaken, quite.
From her luminous sisters
Someone is coming tonight.
You still remember well
that this was a balm:
in the great, dark castle of your feelings,
hidden, enchanted, overgrown,
something free and unhindered
entered
and dwelt there.
And something added its loneliness to yours.
A wind it was.
And something sang
in all the towers and secret stairways.
It consoled you in the Narrow Passageway of Dread,
in Sorrow's Hall, in Loneliness's Chamber,
until your blood's small anxious hammers
rang out free and brave
like water in the castle garden's fountains.
You were alone,
and they found you at home!
Joringel, Little Freddie and Cinderella!
Now they moved in
and settled very near you in your castle.
You heard these pale siblings walk around
with fearful, soft childish steps,
around in this stone castle which was yours.
And it was you they resembled.
But they were more than that,
the way good friends
or siblings are;
they were as near to you
as your own hands,
and as like them.
And it was easy to see
that the care you felt for them
was what drew them onward,
helped them all to breast
the dense growth of thorny woods
which grew for miles and miles around your castle.
They had all just walked and walked,
pursued by witches and eerie quagmires,
and led astray by a gingerbread house.
Some help they got from plants and animals,
from blueberries and kind bunny rabbits.
But it was the magic help coming from you
and all your princely boyish sorrow
which gave them a sure and secret way
into your fortress.
Now they were helping you.
And all they did, was to exist.
To be there.
For princes desire
that there should be other princes too.
Yes, that was it!
Such exiled princes
are the only ones who really know
how it is with you.
And this was the help they could give you:
to let their own interior grow in you.
They remembered only dimly who they were.
You had space where they all could live,
and they all let their homelessness grow
and mount tall within you. That was an answer.
Thus you grew too.
And the wood around your castle was still wild.
Still full of witchery and terror.
But between the trees there were level places
where strange and pleasing things took place
in childhood's fantastic nights.
There you saw the bunny and its mother
with paws as soft as flowers
around each other, on the soft earth,
sleeping against the moss-grown stumps.
Thus you grew big.
And whatever you may since then
have understood,
is rooted in those days of real time,
in the Enchanted Castle of the Feelings.
Jens Bjørneboe, "Eventyrene". From Ariadne (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1953). Samlede Dikt, ©1977, 1995 by Gyldendal Norsk Forlag A/S. Originally published in Ariadne, ©1953 by Aschehougs Forlag A/S. Used by permission. English translation ©1998 by Esther Greenleaf Mürer
A Christmas Poem
Translated by Esther Greenleaf Mürer
Two thousand years.
And then another night.
In a few hours the feast comes round again
And the grain which lay at death's door in the ground,
besieged by frost, once more can get to work
and go toward spring.
Two thousand years.
How many thousand nights
did Helios' candles come to stand for swords,
for icy-cold and murderous stillettos,
while in the earth the seeds turned into suns
in fields ice-solid, frozen to the core
—and went toward spring?
Yes, went toward spring
yet while an earthly winter
had merely laid its freezing snow-white lie
around the first hibernal nights and days!
Before the winter can take hold in earnest
the seed is filled with fine, ethereal fire.
And goes toward spring.
O you whose power sustains the stars on high,
you whose command divided land from sea,
and east from west! Who parted north and south!
As winter comes you hold before our eyes
the mightiest of the pictures you have given,
And bid us: Read!
Read the stars, the corn! Read sun and earth!
For all is image, all is metaphor!
Read the Fall!
But most of all: Read child and stall!
Two thousand years.
And yet the natal night is here and now.
You are virgin, child and carpenter,
and shepherd, and a king from Eastern lands.
But know that Caesar, him you are as well!
King Herod too.
The stall where the seed corn
of good was stored,
was once filled by the kings from the east.
This sight was solace to the carpenter,
For Joseph saw that the child was bringing peace.
And when he went outside the stall to pray,
the stars came and took residence in his words:
“Tonight a sign for the world has come to pass!
Now it has turned around in the dark earth.
Now it can snow. . . .”
My Heart
Translated by Solrun Hoaas
My heart is an orphan
It has neither home, nor place to live,
it has no clothes, no food, no shoes,
it has neither bed nor childhood faith.
It has no rest.
My heart is a poor boy
.
He always wanders from farm to farm,
he begs for bread and a sip of milk,
he begs for a rag to dress a wound
And he takes what he gets.
He begs for rags and things to wear,
to sit on a footstool and rest a while,
to lie in the barn and take a nap.
But a steer attacks, and a dog barks
A man yells abuse.
My heart is an orphan.
It has forgotten its mother, forgotten its father.
But it asks about them wherever it fares.
That question is all it can call its own.
And it receives no reply.
So I took that poor boy by the hand
and spoke to him: You know that you are
the sole thing in me about which I care
You have sought your father both far and near
He is not here.
Your father lives beyond the seventh horizon.
He has the most beautiful palace ever seen,
and if you find your way, your heart will sing.
My heart, my heart, then you will be Prince.
You will be Prince.
Easter: The Basket
Maker
Translated by Joe Martin
Here I have made something quite new
never seen before: A crown of thorns.
I, who dwell in Jerusalem
—my home's on the street of basket weavers—
a quiet man with workshop, wife and children;
I know the work I do quite well
and such a crown I've never made before.
I cut my branches from a tree of roses,
seven thin branches, pliable and long,
seven soft thorny branches were enough.
On those branches there were many, many
of this year's young roses sprouted forth.
I put all of the extras in a mug
—the dark, red and the wet, green—
so they gave a happy fragrance in my house,
and burn out rather slowly like a fire.
But no one at the workshop here can see
what they shall do with such a crown as that.
It is like hearing a fairy tale
to lie so quiet at night:
Outside whisper wise animals,
the dog and horse and cat.
Then comes the early grey of dawn
when birds wake up and fly;
they rise up to the blue of the sky
and write their mighty script there
that no human being can understand
and no one can decipher.
David Sings of
Jonathan (1955)
Translated by Esther Greenleaf Mürer
Like milk are the profiles of the king's daughters,
like wheat is the scent of their hair.
like good soil are they when they repose,
and like lionesses when they walk.
Yea, their walk is splendid as the she-lion's,
But Jonathan, you fall on me like rain!
Your love is sweeter than that of women,
And David sprouted like spring grain.
I grew and became glorious in our play,
from love for you, for the king's son;
I was a willow, I became an oak,
myself became a king, but oh, you were the well
which gave me strength and courage in my limbs.
To touch you and to look at you
David often came forth from his hiding places,
from mountains, caves, and lonely desert ways!
You were as water in a mountain rill;
in your look and handclasp I have bathed.
And my song shall tell of our love
When all other songs have died away!
Disciple:
He washed our feet,
and became our lord.
He served us,
and thereby he bound us
to him forever.
Then I betrayed him.
Pilate:
I merely repeat this:
What is truth?
And this question
makes us all silent.
Go hence, man,
you are innocent!
Disciple:
So I betrayed him.
So we all betrayed him.
We slept. We fled.
All is sleep.
He washed our feet.
Since then
we are all guilty.
He said we were free,
and with that we became his.
But the servants of death
laid hands on him.
They nailed him to the wood
to help
their master
conquer life.
Thus, they thought,
much work was done.
And the master came —
our master
drove him away.
Because he died,
he drove away death.
Pilate:
From Rome comes a report
that overseas grain
means a fall in the price
of our own wheat.
Capital alone survives.
Now the farmers are selling
their land dirt cheap.
What does your master
give such folk to eat?
Disciple:
For three days he fought.
Then he won the victory,
and death fled.
Pilate:
What does he give them to eat?
Disciple:
His body
became one with the earth,
and all that grows upon it
is blessed.
Because he lives in it.
Pilate:
An economic crisis
without equal
has brought confusion
into our money system.
The imported wheat
from Asia and Africa
has crushed
our domestic market.
Industry too
is hard hit
by competitors
from the east
in linen and glass.
And the deflation
will drown us in goods.
No one is buying.
From Rome there are daily reports
of new drops in prices
and weakened purchasing power
and sales of land.
Worthless land.
Disciple:
All that it bears
of bread and wine
is now his body.
When someone eats this,
and understands
what they do,
then he arises in them.
Pilate:
What says the master
to the deflation?
What does he give them
to eat and drink?
What does he give them
for clothes?
Disciple:
He washed our feet.
Then he gave us
some bread and some wine.
His body . . .
Pilate:
He is harmless.
Disciple:
Then I betrayed him.
I slept.
Now let me be condemned!
Pilate:
Your complaint is invalid
in Roman law.
I find you
harmless and innocent.
This page last updated February 2005