Here in this silent alley,
with the shine of many windows,
where behind tiles and blackened roofs
the night sky’s violet glows –
Here, when the day is past
I wander in the hours of dusk,
knows all again and longs
towards a time that’s lost.
Oh, I love these hovels,
chalked and grey and blackish,
these crooked, reddish walls,
these deep and creepy gates –
Love this gloomy alley,
the distant golden heaven,
the stars behind the rooftops,
the street and the buzz thereon –
These men and these women,
these drunks and beggars;
the wild birds of the lamplight,
these madams and these players.
And I wander in this alley
listening to the evening sounds:
screams and fighting, women’s voices,
children’s cries and drinking songs.
Oh, I recognize these voices,
know them from past times;
strangel they sound in the darkness,
a wild, confused complaint that climbs.
Now defiant, now in pain,
it never stills, just like the sea –
it’s the resonance of the depths,
it is the street’s poetry…
— translated by K-M Skalkenæs, 13/1-2013