FORÅRSDIGT:

Nu rider nattens rytter

med lys i aftenlande

og tusind fugle letter

langs lyse vårbrudsrande.

Vi søger ad øde veje

et varsel om ting der gror

mens verden lyser og tøver

tung under usagte ord.

Se, verden bliver en anden,

forvandlet træder den nær,

en nyfødt trolddom går sagte

og græder blandt vårens træer.

SØMANDSDIGT:

Du lo så lyst en aften,

så lyst som kun du kan le,

da brød der en drift delfiner

af en morgentung dønning et sted.

Du vågned´ en morgen og smilte

og fuglene bag dit blik

var fugle i flugt over floden

hvor en flammende dag forgik.

Nu går vi i mørknende byer,

dårskabens datter og jeg

under hendes hænder forødes

en smerte, der vaktes af dig.

TIL SERVITRICEN LOTTE:

Dine skottende øjnes trolddom

i denne fortryllede vår

driver gæk med solen

under dit troldehår.

Og dit væsen er forårets væsen, 

en dans og en maskepi

og solen bli´r kåd og elsker

de øjne den bader sig i.

I mig ser du alder og grånende hår,

livet svandt som en sommervind,

og nu er jeg skinsyg på solen

og dens leg i et pigesind.

SLUTSPIL:

Kender du kærligheden?

har du følt dens usynlige hænder?

Har du følt det, at du blev båret

af stærkere, vildere hænder?

Og kender du afmagten?

det at stå der, kejtet, med blikket vendt?

så har du kendt den dybeste armod

når både hadet og kærligheden er endt.

THE FINAL REVENGE

(When Antonia hurt her leg)

Ove the Carribean Sea

A tropical storm gathers, 

The furious white teeth

Of sizzling foam on angry waves

Gleam in Roentgen lightnings.

Deep under the central Pacific

A continental plate

Begins a fatal eastward drift.

A rising tsunami 

Begins its journey towards Japan.

In the Brahmaputra Delta

The first mangroves drown in silence

As the yellow waters 

Begin to rise

Unnoticed by playing village children.

That whirling giant asteroid

Which is now passing Jupiter

Is bound to hit, I think.

I conclude nature has at last realized

My beloved hurt her knee.

A SUMMER´S PRIDE

(To Lisbeth)

I saw her sitting carelessly

Among the signs of May,

Her face more bright than ivory

Outshone the infant day.

She came through twilight tears of dew

Unconsciously shy

Our touches still were trembling new

As we approached July.

With silver showers tinkling through

The leaves of lofty days

We sat park-sheltered listening to

What rainy August says.

A misty sun which frostily

A summer´s pride undid

Sank ignorant and winterly

Beneath her careless lids.

I search the waste and wilderness

I roam the mountain land,

My heart is ceaselessly caressed

As by a withered hand.

ANTONIA TAKES CONFESSION:

I sat as a repentant sinner,

I did not quite know what to say,

Again, of course, I tried to win her

Attention on a cloudy day.

As a catholic who does his duty, 

Confessing at the end of year

And scrutinized by her beauty

I wavered between love and fear.

Old sins involving drink and women

Did cross my lips in muddy rivers,

And all the time she calmly watched me

My twisted lips, my frozen shivers.

The smell of whiskey, a dancing whore,

The reek of passions base and low. 

Left dirty footsteps in her pure

Unblemished beauty´s virgin snow.

In my homeland lies today

The winter´s first, untrodden snows

It will reflect the Milky Way

And that is all her beauty knows

A NEW GODDESS ENTERS ATHENS

(The day Antonia went to Athens)

Above the Plaka Erechtheion

Commemorates a chthonic god,

It´s Karyatids are planning flight

For over is their antique might.

The four looked down on Socrates

In conversation with Thais

But now with envy all replete

They try to move their marble feet.

They see sweet Antonia come

Her smile with coal-black hair encircled

And though the four are made of stone

They know their glory days are gone.

No, stare you on towards Salamis,

Gone is the sage from Alopeke,

Your sunny eyes will gleam at ease

It is my heart that finds no peace.

The arriving goddess´  tripping feet

With sweet parthenogenesis

Tread softly and with rhythmic beat

Bewitch my heart beyond release.

BANGKOK MADONNA

(To Kao Jantramart)

Come Eastern love on tiny velvet feet

Where my heart lies, beyond the darkened snow,

Leave scents of lotus, shun your sunrise seat

Beneath the dawn enchanted let us go.

And we will stray forgetful of the day

Seasons of laughter in the shade of you,

A comely sadness now and then will lay

Your raven eyes with tears like morning dew.

And I will hide my tears in nightly streams

Of your hair´s midnight, fall from here

In rivers of oblivion and of dreams

And meet you loving in the field of fears.

Your many voices whisper on the breeze,

They play on leaves of aspen as on strings,

A flow of fading music will I seize

And rise one May-born morning on my wings.

AN ANGEL

(To my Master from Lake Genezareth)

He is a midnight walker and he wakes at brazen doors,

On flaming feet he hurries over accidental floors,

Of starlight is his mantle made, he wears a diamond stick

Traversing desert waters where he moves unseen and quick.

And were he seen by human eyes he were considered fair

When courting Supreme Beauty in her high, primordial chair,

Or sliding his wrought dagger from its silent, superb sheath

And carving Beauty´s shadow which we gaze at here beneath.

UNDYING ROSE

(To Lisbeth)

We stood there by your window

As night was drawing close,

Our love did shine like petal leaves

Upon a crimson rose.

I told you then, I do recall

How Beauty once must die

Like withered leaves do in the fall

With whispers of goodbye.

And we stood close, you held my hand

And shook your curly head,

You said I quoted ancient books

I happened to have read.

I now admit that then I thought

You were a bit naive,

But I have read and I have sought

A truth by which to live.

And now I know that you were right

For inside me still grows

The Beauty that was worth the fight

The petals of a rose.

AFRO QUEEN

(To Joy Nkennachor)

Ebony is the facial sheen

Of my betrothëd Afro Queen

The Niger Delta in her veins

Inaugurates the season´s rains.

From dancing feet to fingertips

The rhythmic movement of her hips

Gives every moving body part

Status of a work of art.

She carries with her when she comes

The music of the ancient drums,

A living, laughing incarnation

Of some forgotten incantation.

She comes before the morning light

From deepest, equatorial night

To perch in silence by my soul

Like some extinct, Jurassic owl.

And whisper when the night is deepest

Obscure,paleolithic secrets

Until her love I buried find

Deep in a royal Afro mind.

THE SNOWBALL                                                   

(To Karin)

When I did teach the classics in your classroom long ago,

You sat there young and blushing at the fall of the first snow,

I wrote upon the blackboard and old, medieval poem,

To you, fresh from the snow, your hair was hanging down,

On how an icy snowball could in fact be full of fire

When thrown by darling Juliet whom the poet did desire. 

I ask a long time after, now my hair is turning grey

What thought were in your mind that frosty winter´s day?

For as I continued teaching on Minoans and on Crete

A snowball flew across the room and landed at my feet.

I tell you now, sweet Karin, that across the gulf of years

You hit me in my dreams and I wake up in tears.

THE GARDENER SHEPHERDS

Infinities of corridors

They walk with perfect ease

To reach benign and fertile shores

Of countless galaxies.

And if you raise your eyes and gaze

Upon a winter´s night

You see their trail of gleaming light

Deep in the stellar maze.

And if you look upon a tree

They calmly came and placed it there

For you to touch and see.

The wove upon the primal looms

In stardust from the Cepheids

The leaves on every thing that blooms,

The DNA of species.

On every solid rock and stone

They left their strange geometry,

Returned to space, left us alone

With footprints of their mystery.

THE CAPTAIN AND THE CABIN BOY.

(To Captain Finn Sand)

From Aden out to Sumatra with dolphins in our wake

While passat winds caressed my cheeks and flying fished played,

Where schools of whales towards the Pole their ancient road would take

We headed out for Singapore and the Malacca Strait.

I was a humble cabin boy, my head was full of dreams

But though I loved a sailor´s life I took a different road

Than you, my friend, whose life became the ocean waves and winds.

You life was spent om "Monkey Island" as we sailors call the bridge

And as a travelled captain knew each harbour on the globe,

While I did delve in dusty books from ancient Rome and Greece.

To you I write these verses by my lean, unlovely pen

For you have always stood by me and let me call you friend.

THE COSMIC PILGRIM

I left my dark and lonely room, 

A thousand years ago

I walk now in the darkening gloom

Upon the time-space continuum.

The gleaming city in my eye

Is moving as I go

Behind me far horizons

Are sinking lost and low.

I am a cosmic pilgrim,

I am the human soul,

The Heavenly Jerusalem                  

Sinks beyond the Pole.

And I shall never reach it,

But I walk on and on

Till all the stars are gone.

ANTONIA AND I TELL DIRTY JOKES

She walks around as usual

On fast and busy kitchen legs,

We touch the un-congenial

And mainly funny theme of sex.

And while she gently laughs and cooks

And strikes her hair for she is vain

I do my best to tell her jokes

From obscure regions of my brain.

We both have scientific minds

And this is not strange territory

For I have asked what skin one finds

In the vaginal interiors.

We smile and laugh, the jokes grow worse,

Two cultures share what we all know

We laugh so loud my limping verse

For such amusement is too slow.

For what is much the funniest thing

Is laughing loud and joking thus,

We never for a moment think

Such crazy things could interest us.

UNFORESEEN NEMESIS

(To men from the 60s and 70s)

The women from the two decades,

The sixties and the seventies

Did prophesy a Jungian shade

Inhabited our manly psyches.

They recommended we relate to

Our ANIMA, our inner female,

But quite forgot their inner ditto,

Their inner manly ANIMUS.

While we did hoover and wash dishes

Unseen by all they changed their persons

So now when three decades are over

Their inner MAN has come to power.

So almost every one we meet

Has boyish haircuts and wear slacks,

Without a bra they walk the streets.

Do I hear laughter from afar

From gods that watch their nemesis?

DE AMICITIA (On friendship)

(To Fred Feddersen, USA)

With Plato and the Greeks I find

Our love for soulmates, when we find them,

Is born within the confines of the mind

With no respect for sex or gender.

Though most will claim we can´t avoid

When we have found a faithful pal

The theories of Sigmund Freud

Such views are too conventional.

"They´re always seen together!" yells the crowd

And because two guys meet regularly

Their sexuality is in doubt

In the thinking of the bourgeoisie.

The assembly in my Irish bar

Does never give those bores a chance

But lets it be know wide and far

They have a heterosexual, male romance.

THOUGHTS AT THE YMCA.

(To Britta)

Four icons sit in beauty in my loving memory,

They are the girls that through the years I loved religiously.

I daily pay them homage with the worship of my mind

But many summers laughed and died since I was left behind.

But just today at lunch down in the local charity

You called my name, or do I dream, you smiled flirtatiously.

You are no longer young, your beauty is mature

And I confess I can´t resist your smile and female lure.

But this is no proposal, I adore you from afar

For I believe in Plato, the greek philosopher.

To me you are a beauty that the gods have kindly sent

And poems outlive roses as a humble compliment.

THE VIOLET

(To Lisbeth)

One entire year with its span of coloured days

The sun was younger when you came and you touched

This wild heart of mine with your violet hands unconsciously

Opened these eyes of mine to see your violet beauty.

One entire year with its span of coloured days

This wild heart of mine was open praising the violet;

Now, on the edge of the waste and the wintry darkness

Still my heart is open praising the violet

Still pouring forth the praise of your violet beauty.

                                  ODE TO ANTONIA

                        Enthroned upon af face I saw today

                        Sat Beauty laughing as I turned the corner

                        The discos of the Milky Way

                        Can clearly not lay claim upon her.

                        I doubt not that her speeding car

                        That hooted loudly as I passed her

                         Has come here from an unknown star

                         That boasts to shine upon her beauty.

                         Oh could I walk the starlit road

                         Across the great abyss at nighttime

                         To where such timeless beauties grow

                         And stand alone and calmly watch them.

                         And do the sleep on beds of roses

                         And wake up laughing in the sun?

                         And who makes words and who composes

                         In my ears now this tender song?

                         I doubt not it´s the birds that I see laughing

                         Behind her eyes as she speeds by

                         And I walk on to spend on nothing

                         My empty time and lonely day.

A POEM ON GOD

I sit in silence, deep in thought

Upon the silence inside God

To Whom no pronoun can refer

For he and she and it are words

That cannot to the Being relate

From Whom the world does emanate.

Who effortlessly, in a vacuum,

Built up a world, controlled the atom;

The greek philosophers nearly had it

When they declared it built on spirit,

For if instead of that we say

That it was built on energy

The very chair on which I sit

Is all the time upheld by spirit.

For in the thought of Plotinus

Energy clearly equals NOUS,

So that in fact our modern physics

Speak with the tongue of ancient mystics.

ANTONIA BECOMES MY BUDDY

My goddess so dislikes approaches

By loving mortals such as I

That we have organized our touches

In what may seem a funny way.

And since that I am well aware

What happens if I touch her with emotion

Such insane things I do not dare

The universe might face explosion!

And since in Greece almost all men

Do only go to pubs for women

I brought within her mental ken

The mainly Anglo "buddy system".

So after hours of deep suspension

In seas of bliss as I do watch her

With divine elegance clean the kitchen

I stumble up for my departure...

I have in mind the cosmic fate

And gently slap her leaning shoulder

As if she was my drinking mate

And mumble, "Till tomorrow, buddy!"

Nu ER vi jo altså en REALSKOLEKLASSE og derfor skulle de gamle venner ikke have stort besvær med at studere mine ENGELSKE digte.

De er digte fra voksenalderen og der er lidt mere en baggrund af humor og distance.

Mens kendere af dansk poesi måske kan kende en anelse indflydelse fra den unge digter Morten Nielsen kan kendere af engelsk poesi måske ane flere forbilleder.

Digtet A Stone Age Hunter har f.eks. lidt W.B. Yeats i sig - det kan jeg selv se NU.

Men hvad - de store italienske renæssancemalere havde også stået i lære hos geniale mestre.

Der er meget af MIG SELV i digtet The Final Revenge.

.

Udvalg kan læses HER. Og endnu flere HER.

Et eksempel:   NEW YEAR CONFESSION TO ANTONIA     

I sat as a repentant sinner
And did not quite know what to say,
Again, of course, I tried to win her
Attention on a cloudy day.

As a catholic who does his duty,
Confessing at the end of year,
And scrutinized by her beauty,
I wavered between love and fear.

Old sins involving drink and women
Did cross my lips in muddy rivers,
And all the while she calmly watched me,
My twisted lips, my frozen shivers.

The smell of whiskey, a dancing whore, 
That reeked of actions base and low
Left dirty footsteps in her pure
Unblemished Beauty´s virgin snow

In my far homeland lies today 
The winter´s first untrodden snows, 
It will reflect The Milky Way
And this is all her Beauty knows. 

2002

Ode dedikeret til skønne Charlotte.

Dine skottende øjnes trolddom  

 i denne fortryllede vår

 driver gæk med solen

 under dit troldehår. 

       Og dit væsen er forårets væsen 

        en dans og en maskepi

       og solen bli´r kåd og elsker

       de øjne den bader sig i.

       I mig ser du alder og grånende hår,

       livet svandt som en sommervind,

       og nu er jeg skinsyg på solen

       og dens leg i dit pigesind.

Ode To Antonia

Enthroned upon a face I saw today 
Sat beauty laughing as I turned the corner 
The discos of the Milky Way 
Can clearly not lay claim upon her. 
I doubt not that her speeding car 
That hooted loudly as she passed me 
Had come here from an unknown star 

That boasts to shine upon her beauty. 
Oh could I walk the starlit road 
Across the great abyss at nighttime 
To where such timeless beauties grow 
And stand alone and calmly watch them. 
And do they sleep on beds of roses 
And wake up laughing in the sun,

And who makes words and who composes 
In my ears now this tender song? 
I doubt not it is the birds that I see laughing 
Behind her eyes as she speeds by 
And I walk on to spend on nothing 
My empty time and lonely day.

Hermed mine oplevelser af - og fortolkningen af - mit liv med kærligheden.

Som du ved er jeg katolsk humanist på renæssance-facon, altså at mit liv blot er et eksempel på hvorledes et menneskeliv kan leves. Med det berømte citat fra romeren Sallust: 

             Homo sum et nihil humanum alienum a me esse puto

"Jeg er et menneske og jeg anser intet menneskeligt for at være mig fremmed!"

Man vil kunne nogenlunde regne indholdet ud af dette lille stykke hvis man, uden at falde i søvn, tramper igennem mine erindringer Det var en varm dag. Men hvem gør det? Mit enorme handicap er at jeg i en tid der er alt dominerende VISUEL (TV og billede efter billede på Facebook) er et udpræget TEXT-MENNESKE.

Her kommer det:

                         MIT LIV MED KÆRLIGHEDEN

ET FORÅRSDIGT

                           Nu rider nattens rytter

                           med lys i aftenlande

                           mens tusind fugle letter

Vi søger ad øde veje

 et varsel om ting, der gror

 mens verden lyser og tøver     

 ung under usagte ord,         

Se, verden bliver en anden,

forvandlet træder den nær;

en nyfødt trolddom går sagte

og græder blandt vårens træer 

                           Du lo så lyst en aften

                           så lyst som kun du kan le,

                           da brød der en drift delfiner

                           af en morgentung dønning et sted.  .

Du vågned en morgen og smilte

og fuglene bag dit blik

var fugle i flugt over floden

 hvor en flammende dag forgik.         

Nu går vi i mørknende byer

dårskabens datter og jeg

under hendes hænder forødes

en smerte der vaktes af dig.

                           Kender du kærligheden?

                           har du følt det at du blev båret

                           af stærkere, vildere hænder?

Og kender du afmagten?

det at stå der, kejtet, med blikket vendt?

så har du kendt den dybeste armod

når både hadet og kærligheden

er endt.