Fjordscene Poetry

The king forbade the word “sorrow” at court,“Unhappiness”, “love”, “happiness”, which all hurt,but “she” and “her” were still left.His queen caressed him like a child,in the twilight hours he lay by her breastwith eyes wide open with pain.He listened with anxiety […]

What is beauty? Ask all the souls in the world –beauty is everything superfluous, every spark, every swelling and great poverty;beauty is to be true to the summer and naked by the autumn’s side;beauty is the parrot’s feathercoat or the […]

Happiness is not what we dream of,happiness is not the night we remember,happiness is not contained in the song of our longing. Happiness is something we never wanted,happiness is something we hardly understand,happiness is the cross that’s raised for everybody.

The first sister loved the sweet strawberries,the second sister loved the red roses,the third sister loved the wreaths of the dead. The first sister married:it is said that she’s happy. The second sister loved with all her soul,it is said […]

You must leave your old path,that path is dirty:men go about with desirous looks thereand you hear the word “happiness” from all lipsand further ahead on the path lies a woman’s bodyand the vultures tear it apart.You have found your […]

The strange tree stands with colourful fruits,the strange tree stands with purple pollenon a sunny slope and whispers quietly:come, come, you golden daughter, you who wander in the autumn, you who listen in the forest,I will tell you wherefrom happiness […]

She sang in the darkness of dusk at the dewy wet fence:In the summer three rose bushes grew at three graves. In the first grave a man lies –he sleeps heavily. In the second a woman with sorrowful features lies […]

Fate said: white you must live or red you shall die!But my heart decided: red shall I live.Now I live in the country where all is yours,death never enters this realm.All day I sit with my arms resting on the […]

My soul was a light blue suit of the sky’s colour;I left it on a cliff near the seaand came to you naked and looked like a woman.And as a woman I sat at your tableand drank a cup of […]

My soul cannot tell or know of any truth,my soul can only cry and wring its hands;my soul cannot remember and defend,my soul cannot consider and confirm.When I was a child I saw the ocean: it was blue,in my youth […]

Sister, fair one, don’t go into the mountains:they deceived me,they had nothing to offer my longing.As a souvenir I broke a branch off the firwhich shaded the road, as lush as a spring bush,and I sought back to the ocean […]

And the queen asked her secret adviser:Who is the evil woman my consort loves?– He loves all the women who light his blood on fire –But which one shall I fight the most?– Your own black mind you shall fight […]

A bird was caught in a golden cagein a white castle by the deep blue sea.Soulful roses promised desire and happiness.And the bird sang of a small town in the high mountains,where the sun is king and the silence queenand […]

Willful and cold my heart becamewhen I began longing for your caresses.My sisters have not yet feltthat I no longer look at them…I no longer speak to anybody…How often don’t I kissthe tiny kitten that sleeps near my breast.I’d want […]

When you saw the face of happiness you were disappointed:this sleeping woman with loose featureswas the most worshipped, the most mentioned,the least known of all goddesses,she who rules over tranquil oceans,blooming gardens, endless days of sunshine,and you decided never to […]

Do not let your pride fall,don’t walk nakedto his arms in tenderness,walk rather away in tearsthat the world has never seenand never scorned. It was so easy and simple for pure childheartsto follow the trail of happiness,but our souls can […]

I don’t want to hear the sad legendthe forest tells.It whispers still between the conifers,it sighs yet between the leaves,yet long slides the shadows between the sinister trunks.Come out on the road. Nobody meets us there.The evening dreams pale red […]

How my soul loves the foreign lands,as if it had no homeland.In distant countries stand the big rocksthat my thoughts linger on.It was a stranger who wrote the strange wordson the hard screen called my soul.Days and nights I lay […]

The sun went down over the foam of the sea and the beach sleptand up in the mountains someone was singing…When the words fell into the water they were dead…And the song disappeared behind the firs and the twilight led […]

The light birds high in the airdon’t fly for me,but the heavy stones on the low beachrest for me.Long did I lay at the foot of the sinister mountainand listen to the wind’s commandin the strong branches of the fir. […]