when they sleep

 

 

All people are children when they sleep.

there's no war in them then.
They open their hands and breathe
in that quiet rhythm heaven has given them.
They pucker their lips like small children
and open their hands halfway,
soldiers and statesmen, servants and masters.
The stars stand guard
and a haze veils the sky,
a few hours when no one will do anybody harm.
If only we could speak to one another then
when our hearts are half-open flowers.
Words like golden bees
would drift in.

 
-- God, teach me the language of sleep.

 

 

 

 

~ Rolf Jacobsen

from Night Music - Selected Poems

translation by Robert Hedin 

photo - children of the boat people

with thanks to Poetry Chaikhana

Sssh

Sssh the sea says

Sssh the small waves at the shore say, sssh

Not so violent, not

So haughty, not

So remarkable

Sssh

Say the tips of the waves

Crowding around the headland's

Surf. Sssh

They say to people

This is our earth,

Our eternity.

~ Rolf Jacobsen

from The Soul is here for its own Joy

edited by Robert Bly 
photo by Eliot Porter 

sunflower

What sower walked over earth,

which hands sowed

our inward seeds of fire?

They went out from his fists like rainbow curves

to frozen earth, young loam, hot sand,

they will sleep there

greedily, and drink up our lives

and explode it into pieces

for the sake of a sunflower that you haven't seen

or a thistle head or a chrysanthemum.

Let the young rain of tears come.

Let the calm hands of grief come.

It's not all as evil as you think.

~ Rolf Jacobsen

translated by Robert Bly

guardian angel

I am the bird that knocks at your window in the morning
and your companion, whom you cannot know,
the blossoms that light up for the blind.

I am the glacier’s crest above the forests, the dazzling one
and the brass voices from cathedral towers.
The thought that suddenly comes over you at midday
and fills you with a singular happiness.

I am one you have loved long ago.
I walk alongside you by day and look intently at you
and put my mouth on your heart
but you don’t know it.

I am your third arm and your second
shadow, the white one,
whom you don’t have the heart for
and who cannot ever forget you.




~ Rolf Jacobsen