By Steinar Opstad / Translated from Norwegian by Ingvild Burkey
The High Priestess/Zweistromland, Anselm Kiefer
The shelves of charred manuscripts
speak of the land between two rivers
and of the reading goddess,
who interprets our lives as signs
and furrows her brow over us
In the most dreamless of times
we will again write poems in ashes
Yes, in ash shall the poems be written
and the rivers will mirror a bygone world
of plains with wild animals and grazing herds
Only when we have grown wiser than our oldest gods
will we find words for the loss
of all animal species all trees all plants
all the insects and the insects’ songs
and of the ways of loving which vanished with them
Incurable is love,
our only healer!
There is a night with no cure
There is a meticulous handwriting on a charred sheet of paper
The last human being is a reader
/
Forfatternesklimaaksjon.no has during the last year collaborated with Free Word and Weather Stations. Now we are about to enlarge our partnership. In the weeks to come we will present translations of five Norwegian poems from our homepage at the Free Words website under the banner «On the Road to Paris». The Norwegian Association of Literary Translators and NORLA – Norwegian Literature Abroad – have supported the translations. You can read more about the collaboration between Free Word and NWCC here. This week we proudly present Steinar Opstads poem Library, translated from the Norwegian by Ingvild Burkey.