Recognition

In my translation, a sequence of poems by the contemporary Norwegian poet Eldrid Lunden, from her collection Gjenkjennelsen (Recognition) which appeared in 1982. The sequence was read by the poet, with these translations, at the Rotterdam International Poetry Festival in 2002.


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Where shall we go the day we see
there is nowhere
to go? When all doors are just as
open as they earlier were closed, when an
open silent space is all that remains
of all your longing?



The big green picture
and the rain making sound
the wind’s darkness in the tree
the forest on a black background

outside in the wind, inside in the wind

All that running water
all that gliding water
under the face, the neck, the skin that
is there for great confusion and balance



The open sucking space around
us
and in us that draws all
movements to it
and lets them go again



That one is an open system
That all one’s thoughts
have probably been thought by others, earlier or right now
That we are now gliding together down a flood
of words. Sometimes we glimpse one another
through the waves, other times not

cool now, water is the mouth




You are my eye that glides through us

I am your face that touches

you are my movement in all joy

I am your language for confusion

you are my sketch for a plan

I am your indistinct face that must always be filled in

we are the only possible point of departure



Yes, I know the darkness that blocks the movement
in us, days
that make you remain standing far inside
a dark lack

the darkness that
suddenly pours in through
sleep, the blood in the body that dives
cold down to the bottom

the fear, like a white curtain in the breast



Close to the blindness, your eye
the white wall
a sorrow and the flowing wall
under the white fingers, under over
your eye

you and the whiteness
you think it is not there, but
in the blue suction between



Your blue cry in the wall
your blueness so beyond reason, spread out
everywhere, and with numb moisture on the inside trickling
without will and with
direction



But when you reach what touches you
it does not touch you
any more

yet there is always something that wants
to touch you

Yesterday you stood jammed into a word
almost without being able to breathe
Today perhaps you can say it, and
tomorrow it will be an almost imperceptible
change of colour in everything that was said



The unknown possible in your life
it rests in you
like a positive balance you can
always take up, also
outside the great powers

what you speak against, you will still remain with
but in reverse fashion

and all movement can be your own
if you go into it



If you say that things are bad
all you have said is
that things are bad

If you say you are oppressed
then you will probably succeed
in being just that

If you want to be an oppressed girl
you must say you are an oppressed girl
you will quite simply be taken
at your word




Come from without, come from within
do we have a language for it, do we have a language for oppression
from without, from within?

The collectively chosen and spoken,
you can certainly hold it up like a mirror, you
will not receive recognition for anything more
than your life, but
your life can be recognized in many
people, powers and masks
it is so



You must decide now
if you want to speak
or if you want to let language
state who you are

your secret word is
not a secret word, it belongs
to us all



You must decide now
who you want to be, you know that most
of what is said lies heavy in the sea
like a will to dive under

the language that submerges you deep
to the point of choking

You must decide if you want to be someone
stated expressly now, you must change languages
for your very life’s sake



As you ask anxiously if
there are people here, you realize
that it’s a reprise, nothing
prevents us from
calling it a context either



The struggle between emotion and intelligence, does it
exist? Yes, it exists
between weak intelligence
and weak emotion

You’re afraid the irrational in you
will show? Will come out?
The irrational is all
the uttermost, visible everywhere



One day you wake up near my
face

your cheek strangely touched

I draw you into my body
with my thought
and look at you

you lie submerged in my
thought, and I
in yours



you are my eye that glides
to rest
on the bottom

reason’s near eye

thought for desire