In a Northern Landscape

Ingela is thin and she never smiles

The man is tall and wears the same subdued colours.

Their accents might be anywhere, both seem perfect

And spend only the winter months here.

They own a stone cottage at the end of a field

That slopes to rocks and a gunmetal sea.

Their silence is part of the silence at this season,

Is so wide that these solitaries seem hemmed in

By a distance of empty sea, a bleak mewing

Of gulls perched on their chimney, expecting storm.

They sit in basket chairs on their verandah,

Reading and hearing music from a tiny transistor.

Their isolation is almost visible:

Blue light on snow or sour milk in a cheese-cloth

Resembles their mysterious element.

They pickle herrings he catches, eat sauerkraut

And make love on cold concrete in the afternoons;

Eaters of yoghurt, they enjoy austere pleasures.

And night oil lamps burn in their small windows

And blocks of pressed peat glow in a simple fireplace.

Arc lamps on the new refinery at the point

Answer their lights; there is blackness and the sound of surf.

They are so alike that they have no need to speak,

Like oppressed orphans who have won a fierce privacy.

Numa paisagem nórdica

Ingela é magra e não sorri nunca.

O homem é alto e usa as mesmas cores brandas.

Falam num sotaque indistinto, parecem perfeitos

E só passam aqui os meses de Inverno.

São donos de uma casa de pedra ao fundo de um campo

Em ladeira que dá para as rochas e um mar de metal.

O silêncio destes solitários faz parte do silêncio

Da estação, tão vasto que parecem cercados

Por uma imensidão de mar vazio, um triste miar

De gaivotas pousadas na chaminé è espera da borrasca.

Sentam-se em cadeiras de verga na varanda,

A ter e ouvir música num minúsculo transístor.

É quase palpável o seu isolamento:

Luz azul sobre a neve ou leite coalhado num pano de queijo

Assemelham-se ao misterioso elemento que é o deles.

Conservam em curtume os arenques que ele apanha, comem chucrute

E fazem amor de tarde no cimento frio;

Comedores de iogurte, gozam prazeres austeros.

À noite candeias de óleo luzem nas janelas pequenas

E blocos de turfa prensada ardem na lareira simples.

No promontório, as lâmpadas de arco da nova refinaria

Respondem-lhes às luzes; há escuridão e som de ressaca.

São tão parecidos que nem sequer precisam de falar,

Tais órfãos oprimidos que conquistaram feroz interioridade.

Site

They’re building a bungalow on the skyline

- here we go again –

they’re building a bungalow like a barracks above

the bogland – the scutty bogland that smells

always of mushrooms damp mushrooms

(here I am stepping into the same poem twice)

 - it’s over the bogland this bungalow – over it

and the one arable acre – I say arable

but I mean grazing mean

there should be store cattle sheep

or even a donkey

on that empty – empity – acre

 - the roof? Well whether it’s cut or trussed’s

really no matter – the pitch of those rafters

it’s too steep and the rectangle

‘v breezeblocks is just too much

of a deuced a damnable rectangle

- yes a damnable rectangle

The Catch

The bedroom window was halfopen

but it was the window catch that caught my eye

 - a small object – utile

with only the tight beauty of its function

and nothing else except

it spoke to me in its own dumbness

like certain stubborn spirit

that pays no heed to those goods that try

 - social selfconscious –

To live only in the daylight