Pia Tafdrup

After frost-white shell of cold


I don’t prefer the chirping of the birds
to silence, nor silence
to the chirping of the birds. I like
the wind’s gust, the change

between sounds and absence,
of sounds, the lustful chaos of song
each spring,
as well as the state of things afterwards,

when something slowly expands
in all directions, starts to smoulder behind
the night’s pulse. Restlessness,
invading longing, a narrow
chink in the hard shell.

To give what cannot be taken,
to take what can only be given,
a single sigh brings it all together.

*

Winter blood


‘You terrorise me with life,’
you say

and hurl me outside myself
for a moment.

Silence hammers steel,
forges it layer by layer to a Damascus knife,

The words cut dark red,
radiate in the flesh.

‘And you terrorise me with death,’
I say

without being able to draw air.

Shiny sharpened sun chill,
flames of fever through the air.


*

Undercurrent


The lake borders on rocks and woods,
Even in the middle of the day a night of metal,
knife edges of sunbeams flicker over the water.

The lake is a gigantic mirror for a stream
of jagged clouds, sheer being,
when the sky drains itself.

Here is captured the fleeting,
the unbounded, the ever
changing.

What is going to die,
by contrast,
brands the mind with glowing iron
when it becomes clear
that death
is approaching,

as the undercurrent in deep lapping
against the bottom of the boat now
signals power of hidden forces,
and the smell of lake water

grows sharp with silt and rot,
while the world shaped by itself
still swims in the universe.


*

Earring


I can’t really ask a husband to repair
the earrings I got
from another man.

For hours I have tried myself
to wiggle the little clip in place,
but it still won’t take hold
of my ear.

My fingers are at work, my soul
is working. Overtime.

The other man gives me
earrings from a stall in a piazza
in Rome, they are oval, they glow

like a consummated sunset,
but to repair them is also
unthinkable. There is no time

for repair, I could have been
more cautious with that gift.
To make me a present of earrings
was not what the first man would do, it

would never occur to him
to give me earrings
such a long time after the wedding and certainly not
to take me to Rome, but

he is good at repairing things,
for a whole lifetime he has repaired my life,
kept me going with,
but mostly without, earrings.


*

The smell greets me


I return home. My own smell
leaps to meet me when I step inside,
I suddenly think about the smell,
which I don’t when I’m at home.

I notice myself as I sniff in
the smell with other people’s noses,
perceive how they experience
my smell when they breathe in.

If they feel pleasure or discomfort, I don’t know,
just that they detect an odour that isn’t theirs,
the smell familiar to me is for them
the smell of another, a stranger.

My nose has smelled many people,
the smells of by far the most are quickly gone again,
there are very few I don’t forget, but my own
I recognise sleepwalker-like each single time.

I return to my smell. Or it comes
to me, a smell-trail I have dragged from room to room
in the apartment, every time it’s the smell that greets me
first, bids me welcome like a hungry carnivore.


*

Nose to the ground


Are there narcotics and intoxicating substances
in the luggage from Copenhagen to Malmö.

Is something illegal being transported
across the Sound in bags and suitcases.

By the sense of smell a salmon trout moves
thousands of kilometres through rivers and streams.

Customs officials go through the train with a dog,
whose muzzle sniffs up the air carriage by carriage.

With its antennae
a male moth can register

just a single smell molecule from a female
at up to a distance of around five kilometres.

The dog sniffs for narcotics and chemicals,
is able to smell concentrations

hundreds of thousands of times smaller than I can,
it stops in front of a bag in the compartment,

has its raised muzzle smelled trouble.
All at once the dog detects something, scrapes its paw,

the passenger opposite sits perfectly still, I
sit perfectly still, listen to his breathless blood.

A forgotten smell suddenly, the smell of myself.
 

THE TASTE OF STEEL

I  No return
    15     Stages on life’s way
    16     In eternal pursuit
    17     Unposted letter
    19     Winter blood
    20     Not even in museums is there peace

II  Meditation
    23     Stopping at the sight of swans
    24     Plenty of time
    25     Taste
    27     Undercurrent
    28     Loneliness

III  Off track
    30     Earring
    31     After frost-white shell of cold
    32     Japanese cherries
    33     Night country
    34     Metal
    36     Bodies without root nets
    37     Down

IV  Crossroads
    40     Power cut
    42     Pont Neuf
    44     Daily choice
    45     The pets and their people
    46     Time and space

V  War
    49     The darkness machine
    50     Razed city
    51     The journalist’s question
    52     The spring’s grave
    53    A before and an after
    54     View from space

VI  Waiting
    57     Chink
    58     A squirrel bids welcome
    59     Despair drinks fire
    60     Life with pigeons
    62     Frog

VII  Loss
    65     The anonymous part of the churchyard
    66     Each in our own flame
    67     Porous border
    70     A display case filled with night
    72     On the other side
    73     Greeting from the deceased
    74     Snow flowers
    76     Residue
    78     Threshold

VIII  Words
    80     Crime scene
    81     Mother tongue
    82     Word and soul
    83     Searchlight
    84     Johan Borgen – a ritual
    86     Poets

IX  Paradox
    89     Harvest
    90     Separation
    91     The taste buds wake up
    92     We are born again
    93     Animal smell of light
    94     Killer whales
    96     Early morning


THE SMELL OF SNOW

I  Breathe in, breathe out
    101     Spirit
    102     Prana
    103     Fresh snow
    105     Under cirrus clouds
    107     Your fragrance wakes me
    109     Freezing fog
    110     Lovesick bird

II  Antitheses
    112     Noses, a comparative study
    114     Seduced by Gregory Pincus
    115     Not a gift
    116     Tags in the night
    118     Cleaning poisons
    120     Them or us
    121     Digital odours

III  Meditation
    125     Spring inhalation
    126     Exchange of smells
    127     Danish cat meets Australian stone
    128     Smell of tomatoes
    129     Smell-trace of a morning
    131    Camellia japonica
    132     Benchmarks from a long day

IV  Bloodstreams
    137     Wrong number
    138     Under the asphalt the Milky Way
    139     Garlic
    140     Nose to the ground
    141     The cream from China

V  The five seasons. A catalogue of smells
    145     Spring
    147     Summer
    149     Autumn
    151     Winter
    153     The fifth season

VI  Flashes of thought
    157     Caught in the act
    158     Smell blind
    159     The meaning of meaninglessness
    160     After showers of bullets in paradise
    162     Words without smell

VII  Vanishing
    164     The smell can be parted from the body
    165     Reflection on snow and ice
    167     Intense lethargy
    168     Glenmorangie Highland Single Malt
    169     The end of icebergs

VIII  Inner world, outer world
    172     The smell greets me
    173     Memory bank for smells
    174     Insect wing
    175     Nausea – a flashback
    177     Stink
    179     Flower shop
    180     The primordial brain

IX  One breath makes the difference
    182     Attack in Copenhagen
    183     Welcome, people live here
    184     I want to be a tree
    185     Twelve breaths
    186     The smell of books
    188     There has been prismatic rain
    189     The stream of smells from below


    191     Notes