Protect your boat against superhuman currents,the whirling abyss of madness –protect your boat against the cheering waves of the fall,they crush everything.Protect yourself – here you don’t count anymore –life and death is one against the frenetic happiness of the […]
Edith Södergran: The Song From the Cloud
Up on the clouds live all I need:my daylight – sure ideas, my lightning – quick certainty,and on the clouds I myself live– white, in sun which blinds,inaccessible, happy, waving goodbye.Goodbye, green woods of my youth.There hang beasts –I will […]
Edith Södergran: The Secret of the Moon
The moon knows… that I must only float here tonight.In copper bands over the lake a certainty shines forth:corpses must lay among the trees on a wonderful beach.The moon shall cast its most beautiful light on the mysterious beach.The wind […]
Edith Södergran: Evening Walk
All the golden stars of time on my dark velvet suit.I am triumphant… tonight… and I tremble.The hard poles of fate pound from my chest.Does the wind whirl up the sand on all pavements?– – – – – – – […]
Edith Södergran: The Storm
Humans,doesn’t the storm pass over the skythat your longing has piled upby eagles borneto eternal heights?Who will bring the storm to its knees?Where does it hit,when it comes from the heights, reckless, with the wings of distant times?Do you hearvoices […]
Edith Södergran: The World Bathes In Blood
The world bathes in blood in order for God to survive.For His magnificence to endure, all other must perish.What do we humans know about how the eternal thrivesand what the gods drink to sustain their power?God will create a new world. […]
Edith Södergran: Prayer
God, Almighty, have mercy on us!See the well of our adoration – it grows deeper and deeper.Seven days and seven nightswe draw waterfrom our well to you.Seven months and three yearsin the same placewe pray for your mercy:let us into […]
Edith Södergran: Oh, My Sunburn-coloured Pinnacles
Oh, my sunburn-coloured pinnacles,will you reclaim me? !!!Eternally I shall live in your lonely yard.There alone is my home,where angels with fire-eyesfall to their kneesand kiss all the dew of longing from the ground. Oh, my undarkened pinnacles!Not a day do […]
Edith Södergran: The Bull
What awaits the bull?My character is a red cloth.Do I not see bloody, red eyes,do I not hear short, ragged breaths,does the earth not tremble under ferocious hooves?No.The bull has no horns.He stands at the criband stubbornly chews his tough […]
Edith Södergran: Grimace d’Artiste
I have nothing but my shining cloak,my red fearlessness.My red fearlessness goes on questsin unworthy countries. I have nothing but the lyre under my arm,my hard string-music;my hard lyre sounds for all peopleon all tracks. I have nothing but my proud […]
Edith Södergran: The Tree In the Forest
There once grew a tree in the forest –beautiful and mighty –I have seen it…It rose over the mists of the ravine towards the lonesome pinnacles of the Earth in lonesome glory.– – – – – – – –Now I hear […]
Edith Södergran: Little Old Man
Little Old Man is counting eggs.Every time he counts there’s one egg less.Friends, do not show him your gold!
Edith Södergran: The Death of the Virgin
The soul of the pure virgin was never mistaken,she knew everything about herself,she knew still more: about other people and about the sea.Blueberry her eyes, raspberry her lips,her hands wax.She danced for the autumn on yellowing carpets,she shrank, whirled and […]
Edith Södergran: What Is Tomorrow?
What is tomorrow? Perhaps not you.Another embrace perhaps, another contact and an identical pain…I leave you with a certainty nobody else has:I will return like a piece of your own pain.I will come to you from another heaven with a […]
Edith Södergran: Strong Hyacinths
You won’t get me to believe in disgusting flies– revenge and selfish desires.I believe in strong hyacinths dripping ancient juice. Lilies heal and cleanse like my own power.You won’t get me to believe in disgusting fliesspreading stench and contagion.I believe […]
Edith Södergran: Discovery
Your love darkens my star –the moon rises in my life.My hand is not at home in yours.Your hand is desire –mine is longing.
Edith Södergran: Dusk
The night comes great with its flossy beardand smiles broadly to all the halfway veiled.Colossal and shapeless all the shapes of the park grow outof the silent lilacs in the dusk.The pretty lilacs have sleepy ears,they dream that the sun […]
Edith Södergran: To a Young Woman
Never did a lusty glance deceive.Hold the man’s heart between your inexperienced child-fingers,draw the man’s flames into the icy chamber of your eyes!You believe in love like you believe in Heaven.He shall give you his heart, a realm and all […]
Edith Södergran: Triumph To Exist
What do I fear? I am part of infinity.I am part of the great force of the All,a lonely world in millions of worlds,a first degree star that is extinguished last.Triumph to live, triumph to breathe, triumph to exist!Triumph to feel […]
Edith Södergran: Introductory Remark
That my writing is poetry none can deny, that it’s on verses I won’t postulate. I have attempted to give certain reluctant poems a rhythm and have thereby observed that I only own the skill of images and words in […]