Kom til Jorda
For et par år sida ramla en duggdråpe ut av et av
kronbladene i liljetapeten i det avstengte rommet i det
fraflytta huset ved kysten. Den eneste som var tilstede
og kunne registrerte dette fenomenet var en døende
flue i vinduskarmen. Jeg fjerna den flua for halvannet
år sida mens jeg tenkte på en episode i barndommen:
jeg falt og slo i stykker en tann mot en betongvegg.
Jeg husker at jeg gråt et kvarter. I natt sov jeg mellom
faren og sønnen min. “Jeg drømte jeg var en
sommerfugl, som ble sugd inn i en vaskemaskin. Og jeg
døde der.”
Translations of this Poem
Come to Earth
Translator: John Burnside
It was two years ago. A dewdrop ran from the throat of a lily in
the faded wallpaper of that locked house on the coast from
which we have now flitted. The single witness to this event: a
housefly, dying on a nearby windowsill.
Eighteen months back, when I swept away this corpse, I was
thinking about the time I toppled into a concrete wall, and
broke my tooth. I was only a child, and I cried a long time,
maybe fifteen minutes.
Last night I slept between my father and my son,and it
seemed to me that I dreamed I was a man dreaming he was
a butterfly, then a butterfly which had been sucked into the
spin cycle of a new washing machine.
And there, I died.
2000
About this poem
‘Northern Light’, the Scottish Poetry Library event at the Edinburgh International Festival Fringe in 2000, featured readings by Rauni Magga Lukkari in Sami and Norwegian with translations read by Gerda Stevenson, in Norwegian by Rune Christiansen and in Gaelic by Aonghas MacNeacail.
The Royal Norwegian Consulate supported the commissioning of translations for the occasion by John Burnside.
