Poem of the Week, week 19: Stein Mehren "The Kiss"
Enjoy a weekly poem by authors from Norway, throughout the year.
THE KISS
There is a clear patch of sky in the rain, you
mild night, dipped in the first star
wriggling and alive in my hands, like fish
and the bodies of birds, You dewy crypt, whose mossy floor
is like green sun-drenched light, the roots
standing in water streaming from the source, as
tremulous as our words, the sky,
twisting through the birds’ bodies, you writhing
moon, in the driftnets of cloudbursts, the rain lowers
its darkness from tiny bells, scuds of rain
lunge through the blood, blue flurries of mild weather,
open streaming stars, dripping landscape
kisses, I kiss your open face in the rain!
Translated by Agnes Scott Langeland in Stein Mehren, To the Outermost Stars, Arc Publications, Todmorden, UK, 2019, p. 89.
See the poem in Norwegian
Poem of the Week
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