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You and I are dissapearing
Björn Håkansson
The cry I bring down
from the hills
belongs to a girl still burning
inside my head. At daybreak
she burns like a piece of paper.
She burns like foxfire
in a tigh-shaped valley.
A skirt of flames
dances around her
at dusk.
We stand with our hands
hanging at our sides,
while she burns
like a sack of dry ice.
She burns like oil on water.
She burns like a cattail torch
dipped in gasoline.
She glows like the fat tip
of a banker’s cigar,
silent as quicksilver.
A tiger under a rainbow
at nightfall.
She burns like a shot glass
of vodka.
She burns like a field of poppies
at the edge of a rain forest.
She rises like a dragonsmoke
to my nostrils.
She burns like a burning bush
driven by a godawful wind.
Δ
Tu e io stiamo sparendo
You
and I are dissapearing
Björn Håkansson
Il grido che porto dalle colline
è di una ragazza che
brucia ancora
nella mia mente. Brucia
all’alba come un pezzo di carta.
Brucia come un tizzone
in una valle a forma di coscia.
Una gonna di fiamme
le danza intorno
al crepuscolo.
Siamo in piedi con le mani
lungo i fianchi,
mentre brucia
come una balla di ghiaccio
secco.
Brucia come petrolio sull'acqua.
Brucia come una torcia di
paglia
intrisa di benzina.
Brilla come la punta grassa
del sigaro d'un banchiere,
silenziosa come argento vivo.
Una tigre sotto un arcobaleno
al calar della notte.
Brucia come una bevuta di vodka.
Brucia come un campo di papaveri
al margine d'una foresta
di pioggia.
Sale come fumo di
drago
alle mie narici.
Brucia come un cespuglio infuocato
spinta da un dannato
vento.
Δ
Tu i jo estem desapreixent
You and I are dissapearing
Björn Håkansson
El crit que baixo dels turons
és d'una noia que encara crema
en el meu cap. A punta de dia
crema com un tros de paper.
Crema com una tisa
en una vall en forma de cuixa.
Una faldilla de flames
balla al seu voltant
a l'hora baixa.
Estem dempeus amb les mans
penjant als costats,
mentre crema
com un sac de gel sec.
Crema com petroli damunt l'aigua.
Crema com una torxa de palla
submergida dins gasolina.
Brilla com la punta grassa
del cigar d'un banquer,
silenciosa com argent viu.
Un tigre sota l'arc de Sant Martí
en fer-se fosc.
Crema com un glop de vodka.
Crema com un camp de roselles
a la vora d'una selva tropical.
S'eleva com el fum del drac
als meus narius.
Crema com un arbust ardent
empentat per un vent maleït.
[Traducció Maria Gironés
i Joan Navarro]
Δ
Believing in iron
The hills my brothers & I created
Never balanced, & it took years
To discover how the world worked.
We could look at a tree
of blackbirds
& tell you how many were there,
But with the scrap dealer
Our math was always off.
Weeks of lifting & grunting
Never added up to much,
But we couldn't stop
Believing in iron.
Abandoned trucks &
cars
Were held to the ground
By thick, nostalgic fingers of vines
Strong as a dozen sharecroppers.
We'd return with our wheelbarrow
Groaning under a new load,
Yet tiger lilies lived better
In their languid, August domain.
Among paper & Coke bottles
Foundry smoke erased sunsets,
& we couldn't believe iron
Left men bent so close to the earth
As if the ore under their
breath
Weighed down the gray sky.
Sometimes I dreamt how our hills
How it all became an anchor
For a warship or bomber
Out over trees with blooms
Too red to look at.
Δ
Camouflaging the Chimera
We tied branches to our helmets.
We painted our faces & rifles
with mud from a riverbank,
blades of grass hung from the pockets
of our tiger suits. We wove
ourselves into the terrain,
content to be a hummingbird's target.
We hugged bamboo & leaned
against a breeze off the river,
slow-dragging with ghosts
from Saigon to Bangkok,
with women left in doorways
reaching in from America.
We aimed at dark-hearted songbirds.
In our way station of shadows
rock apes tried to blow our cover
throwing stones at the sunset.
Chameleons
crawled our spines, changing from day
to night: green to gold,
gold to black. But we waited
till the moon touched metal,
till something almost broke
inside us. VC struggled
with the hillside, like black silk
wrestling iron through grass.
We weren't there. The river
ran
through our bones. Small animals took refuge
against our bodies; we held
our breath,
ready to spring the L-shaped
ambush, as a world revolved
under each man's eyelid.
Δ
Meditations in a swine yard
A god isn't worth the salt
In our bread if we can't
Stamp our feet & shake balled fist
At eaters of the brightest insects
On their first day here.
Sometimes we must tug him
out
Into the hog's bloody mud.
His beauty is our blue
Derision, like a child banging
Her ragdoll against the floor,
Calling for Daddy. A god isn't worth
A drop of water in the hell of his
good
Imagination,
if we can't
curse
Sunsets & threaten to
forsake him
In his storehouse of belladonna,
Tiger hornets, & snakebites.
Δ
Snow Tiger
Ghost sun
half
hidden,
where did you go?
There’s
always a mother
of some
other creature
born to
fight for her young.
But crawl
out of your hide,
walk
upright like a man,
& you
may ask if hunger is the only passion
as you
again lose yourself
in a
white field’s point of view.
In this
glacial quiet
nothing
moves except–
then a
flash of eyes & nerves.
If
cornered in your head by cries from a cave
in
another season, you can’t forget
in this
landscape a pretty horse
translates into a man holding a gun.
Δ
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