Suite for mixed choir, cello and piano (last movement)
Poems by Harry Martinsson, Nobel Prize Winner 1974
Here are the poems translated into English:
The world clock
Seas weighted eat upon hills of time;
The hills have gathered in time’s sea.
Where forests were, fishes’ valleys deepen.
Where seas once lay, forests whisper cool.
World clocks are ticking and space is a’shimmer.
All changes place and number order.
Yet they’re counted, the world’s hours
On Gauri Shankar, in the sea’s valley.
*
Someone said: Time is calling to you.
Your answer was then: I know time yet I know it not.
Time is a monster with heads a thousand.
Which one of the heads is calling to me.
So many paths to choose
yet all end up in one that’s larger:
the one with the power to lure those that are lost
on that very path leads them all astray.
Translated by Jonathan Mair.
Night
Bend and look. The spring is full of stars.
Through the mirrored fern fronds
silently glimmering Venus shines.
It is a verdant earthly night.
Star after star winks into view
clear as through a window in the earth.
A Heavy Thunderstorm
The heavens are darkening.
Like pieces of moldering tar paper
darkness shifts across darkness.
In a formless black rick
night piles up on the shore.
But when the darkness weighs most
lightning’s yellow axe strikes a tree.
The driving rain comes plunging
amid clamorous thunder.
Translated from Swedish by Robin Blanton.
