Poem of the Week, week 9: Tone Hødnebø "Will The Dead"
We have now come to the finale of the series, Poem of the Week. We hope you have enjoyed becoming acquainted with a new poem from Norway and Sápmi every week, throughout the changing seasons – and that there have been words that brought you joy, wonder and reflection.
Thank you very much for following along!
WILL THE DEAD
Will the dead teach you how the river runs,
how the sun shines on the other side
of the sun,
and how the nightingale sings in her sleep,
how the storm calls you to go out,
hammering on the windows to get in.
Will the living teach you
that no one is closer
than the one you are thinking of,
and how the wind can never be a wind,
only locked into a storm,
and no sun more distant
So alive
closer to the shadow than on the paper,
and in the rush of blood that lets you live.
Tone Hødnebø
From Storm Ladder, 2002
Translated by Anthony Barnett in The Other Side of Landscape, An Anthology of Contemporary Nordic Poetry, edited by Anni Sumari & Nicolaj Stockholm, Slope Editions, New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, 2006, p. 179.
See the poem in Norwegian
Poem of the Week
We at NORLA would like to extend a warm thank you to Annette Vonberg, who curated the selection.
You will find all the Poems of the Week collected in the link below, in both the original language and the English translation.
