RADIENT THEMES
Poems meets pictures
JURIS KRONBERG & MICHEL HJORTH
BooxEncounters
RADIENT THEMES
Poems meets pictures
JURIS KRONBERG & MICHEL HJORTH
English translation MARA ROZITIS
BOOXENCOUNTERS
Stockholm, Sweden
POEMS MEET PICTURES
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Poems pages JURIS KRONBERG
The castle 8 About Tomatos 10 If they would agree 14 One evening 17 Night documents 18 from Travel document 20 Spain, 11 March 2004 22 Strata of time 24 Never time to write poetry 26 The first minutes (Ground Zero) 30 Evening finds 32 Globalisation (cosmopolitism) 34 Geography 36 Stockholm haymarket hall 38 I reach out in my darkness 42 Time on Gotland 47 Pictures
Maikis Hjorts
Index galleri 206-208
THE CASTLE For several days I lived in the castle The Lord had hundreds of horses in his stables I could feel their smell I could hear the thunder of their hooves The sound of their laughter In the courtyard horses have even become sculptures Honoured forever in copper People come from faraway places To admire them, to pay their respect I spent some more days in the castle But soon enough, so fast, arrived the time When I had to leave The roar of hooves accompanied my farewells Horses! Although heard, although saddled with fame I never caught sight of you, not even once Your distant unseen images will live on in my imagination And I must admit that you are magnificent Eternally beautiful
ABOUT TOMATOES 1 the tomato crushed in the can woke up too late 2 the aphganian woman forgot her burkha at home fortunately she had a can of tomatoe soup in her pocket 3 the american soldier had tomatoes on he’s eyes 4 two tomatoes crossed the street one of them was crushed by a car the other one said: come ketchup lets go 5 today they had chep tomatoes at Lidl I bought a big bag and went to sit a while at the lake there will come a whale I’ll feed it with tomatoes but no whale showed up while I was waiting I became hungry I ate the tomatoes one after the other (there were sixteen) but no whale showed up I rose up and started my way home now I’m not waiting for the whale any-more now I’m waiting for someone who could explain to me why I waited for a whale at the lake and ate all tomatoes while waiting 6 the evening is dark-blue but just above the horizon rope is a big red tomato witch any second now will be swallowed by night’s black whale
IF THEY WOULD AGREE if they would agree that they are dead if they would stand up in the afternoon sun (its an unusually beautiful autumn) if they once again would pull themselves together their costumes are shattered their walls floors are wrinkled their window glasses have melted if you would shake hands with one of them if she would agree that it is your hand
ONE EVENING One evening when I left my room It followed me No winds could scatter it No sun could wither it No rains could flood it Even though I never returned to it It has stayed in my mind unchanged Time passed but no dust settled On the furniture books piles of paper All was as it once had been Because of me time stood still I am aware of the simple law That my physical return would cause Time’s avalanche to sweep over that room So forcefully that its very existence Could be cast in doubt That it could not even be imagined
NIGHT DOCUMENTS summer nights as dark as winter days and I become like that the night silence is deep I’m woken by the caress of sleeplessness and the silence grows thin at night the lake is a black meadow full of buds of insomnia at night all colours seep into black and grey the inkwell is empty nights are the other side of the mirror of day we look for ourselves there is that a fruit in the tree or a lost fledgling night will not tell the tree at the window is an ink wash daubed with more ink dreams at night come and go as they please a show for free night draws towards morning the clock shows three: midnight of the soul
From TRAVEL DOCUMENT It is a morning in August I stand on a bridge. It’s boards are worn and rotting in places It streches from the Scandinavian highlands in the West to the Latvian lowlands in the east Beneath me dozes the clean mirror of international water I stare at my reflection A fish darts through my left eye my nose my throat and disappears I my hand I hold a stone heavy as a human heart It is a singularly still day: no clouds no questions no answers I lift the stone towards the sun and thrust it at my reflection in the water It breaks up into countless fitful fragments It was the direct line, it was all the straightforward that dispersed That which would have helped me come aground somewhere near Liepaja or Jurmala
SPAIN, 11 MARCH 2004 Nineteen-ninety March eleven was in the Lithuanian colours This year it is in the colours of blood and Spain When the snow starts to melt outside my window but the lake is still white as a piece of paper no-one’s written on and tourists slowly start to gather by the Mediterranean Sea and the pigeons of Alhambra begin to hope for better days a commuter train in Madrid takes off from the rails as if it suddenly has got wings as if it wanted to fly away to still warmer lands then falls down and drills its way through the earth through the layers of everyday life, of this our time through oil pipelines through the gardens of Semiarid and the flood of the time of Noah and millions of umbrellas cover the streets of Spain the flood comes from above and from the bodies of people it is red like Spanish wine like the sunset over desert dunes where once again the poet Garcia Lorca is killed and the words he never will write
STRATA OF TIME Day sneaks off with a smell of tobacco Rain. Old film music drifts From a loudspeaker It’s Nostalgia’s birthday today Days of the past turn up Like uninvited guests Time leafs through your old as yet unwritten diaries You turn time Like the pages of a newspaper Where the print refuses to stick *
Empty streets empty windows Fill up with your ghosts of old A flash of thought a flash of proximity A flash of what may be Maybe was. May as well have been Rain all day. Fatigue Up to your neck
* A wonder the houses haven’t been worn down By all these writings A wonder the words haven’t been worn away By all these prints of fingers A wonder the bridges haven’t been ground to dust Night. Houses of Parliament and Government sleep Democracy has surrendered to the dictatorship of dreams
NEVER TIME TO WRITE POETRY sometimes I’ll work on the underground sometimes I’ll work as a diplomat sometimes I’ll deliver lectures in diverse places sometimes I’ll translate novels or poems sometimes I’ll go & buy groceries or browse in bookshops in diverse places sometimes I’ll cook a meal sometimes I’ll watch a show sometimes I’ll take a walk or a glass or two of wine or beer with colleagues from diverse places or alone in airports or planes never time to write poetry it happens in the time that isn’t I steal some hours from sleep shut the book I’m translating now shorten cooking times prepare spaghetti al dente (supposed to be healthier) get the kids to prefer very rare meat chop the veg with a meat cleaver all to save time I write on buses trains and planes for there’s never time to write poetry so it isn’t really work it’s just a way to pretend there is no time that exists or there is but it stops while I write and in its stead letters tick across the page or screen like seconds and just like time poetry is both linear & cyclical I always have time to write poetry that’s all I do
THE FIRST MINUTES (GROUND ZERO) “nu jurka” shouted steiks in that very moment silence fell someone exhaled himself someone inhaled someone else in the bars the clinking of glasses stopped in a not too large river a salmon cut the water surface with enviable silence summer returned to fall what more? without touching lips the wine soundlessly ran into throats like a rooster into the yard the ritual deranging fear (silently) the guitar-string thanked the former tones in a black and white mind set the piano-hammers soundlessly accompanied a mute tenor’s mute spite on the wide-screen sky people watched each others thoughts in the river-fire clouds von triers broken waves and a bell-tongue that flew downwards hither and forth like a river with no bed
EVENING FINDS Evening finds a landscape Like an artist’s brush finds paint The sun is falling from the sky Like an apple keeps falling from the tree You are on a tangled forest path Only memory knows it Only the mind doubts it Autumn comes barefoot Your thumb makes One more pit on the surface of the moon Freedom bleaches your bonds Even now one is transparent Autumn lakes are deep But even now the sea is salt
GLOBALISATION (cosmopolitism) I scratched myself on my Stockholm and forgave you for all your New Yorks ’cause in some way I’m really fond of your Bombay go and throw yourself into Rome you got a lot of Galway to Buenos Aires my Bankoks on such a winter day who will be the Tel Aviver about my Washingtonnes of ideas so let’s drink a glass of Vienna and everything will be Copenhagen just don’t Hull your eyes so Miamingly
GEOGRAPHY And where is my geography? Up there a movement in sodden skies for all I know an angel’s Lakeside summer oak ash alder silver birch starling nuthatch nightingale song thrush warbler red deer hare wormwood yarrow nettle of course clover speedwell meadow-sweet This nature through which my movement proceeds round which my eye skirts as if to uncover things even more natural Below the jetty I see sky on the water I sense a sweep of wings I sense my geography
STOCKHOLM HAYMARKET HALL I remember when I was a little squirt the Estonian stalls I remember, yes, I do in the old Haymarket hall that so aspired to heaven there sprung up next to it a cluster of skyscrapers There in the Estonian stalls you could buy clotted curd, sprats and river lampray light rye with caraway and heavy black bread as well as something quite divine genuine oriental halvah from Turku in Finland Then I was quite sure of course that Turku was somewhere in Turkey Here just a stone´s throw from the Concert Hall your can hear cucumber drum rolls on the counters avocado cadenzas, artichoke marches musk melon minuets a mango tango, a kiwi twist, a shallot shimmy, a banana shake a chilli fandango, swedish hambo, a wiener schnitzel waltz pork-rib shuffle, pig trotter rock
and gherkin gavotte a squash square dance a radish reel a sultry passion-fruit slow fox Sweet chestnuts clatter like castanets Ox tongues chatter in time Gutted fish softly sigh A begonia sings an aria and all the sweet pastries too numerous to name join in with a saccharine love song And the Estonian black rye male choir intones an old Ugrian chant while the light rye sings a nostalgic ballad about the homeland which unlike bread cannot be sliced Flavours are tossed with aromas and colours into a single loud luminous abundance I remember, therefore I am a warm breeze wafts up from the past That is the vertical line my being is the horizontal and where they intersect is my own becoming
Eyes smart from sleepless years
stretches no further than the intensity of despair Flesh becomes an abstraction envelopes dissolve unopened and the triumph of non-being is already strewn with dust
Something emerged in a burst of smiles something moved over timbers full of promise in a newly built house and stuck fast in the cracks
Could it be the Plough in the dark sky – a budding embrace of my gilded mistakes
Darkness is rebuffed by a figure and its already realized intent. Could it be a mirror, but its surface is not smooth and polished
all the centuries of civilization and whips of abstract assumption and hopes that lie napping
Maybe the victory of Pyrrhus will be evoked Maybe the Rook and King will find some common ground. The shadow of desire
I will be a field left fallow where truth will stride. Subtextual ironies will be hung on the walls God will bless my longings and the counsellor Humility will with a tearful smile take part in the festival of the final accounting
Survival lodges in autumn leaves the withered past crumbles to dust And love leaves fingerprints on my inner shelf
It is not only about hardship and ease or the razor edged shadows of tomorrow to be dodged
Blind consummation with baying ambition Laughing disillusion. Too many followers:
Life is stone and a gun barrel wreath weaves round the violin string
I REACH OUT IN MY DARKNESS
TIME ON GOTLAND She sat on a bench on the outskirts of Slite. She was blind and 90. In her youth she had sailed to Estonia. I said: My parents came to Gotland in the beginning of 45 as refugees in a fishing boat from Liepaja. - Liepaja? - Yes, it’s an important harbour town in Latvia, it was once called Libau. - Oh, yes Libau. I know all about Libau. Don’t they call it Libau anymore? - No, Libau was the German name. - I remember them well, the Baltic place names I learned at school: Dorpat, Libau, Reval. Reval is called Tallinn now, I think. And Königsberg, what’s that one now? - Kaliningrad. - Really. But of course Riga is still Riga, isn’t it?