Poetry on the Internet.
Copyright ©2000 Rune Hesjedal

Rune Hesjedal:
11 POEMS 2000
English version by Kenneth C Steven

Part I: The Dreams 17.02 - 04.06__ Part II: Wandering 08.06 - 03.09
Part III: The Rooms 07.09 - 03.12 __Part IV: Information

Part I: The Dreams 17.02 - 04.06

FEBRUARY IN THE CITY
by the sea, the market seller slings his jacket
over his seatback in my mind, on the slate-paved square
beneath autistic pillars the women kiss sensuously
the present, and a local philosopher kisses
his brain. In the newspaper columns
Pavlov castigates the dogs while the meteorologist
wrongly forecasts white correction fluid
over parked hills, they have all
been to interviews seven times over



THE MARCH STREET
is older than the city, a new-shaved
woman new to the textiles business offers
pernod in her fitting room, the history lecturer
says that when times change things become more surely
the same, with flecks of chalk on his suit
he says this, as from a mobile office
he says the individual is unwittingly older
than customs. Between
the roof guttering in the alley there fumbles
a young boy at a girl's breast for
the first time, and the evening drags its fingers
slowly through his hair



APRIL
with bonfires in private gardens, a bottle of spring
beer in the back pocket, it's obviously this
that's changing the climate in our neighbourhood, the ice
age prophets can at any time at all change down that gear lever into
winter, there's no such thing as a general morning after
pill, if only a flute of gene-manipulated willow could
knit the molecules of my conscience to earth
warmth, the drawbacks of my conditions
to the whole life mass



MAY
Much to be happy about, on Saturday (for example) I look at
pictures of people on carrying bags, behind
the tired paint of railings I see gold crocuses exchanged
for red petunias. On Sunday: Climbing boots and
erotic landscape, the horizon's stiff
nipples, then the Fernicular down to
Zachen, beer in big tankards, a faint
awareness of repetition

Part II: Wandering 08.06 - 03.09


Poetry reading by Jørn Rønnau's sculpture BØKSTAV in Nygaard's Park

NATURE YOU ARE FULL
of lifestyle problems, Nature habitats
must think cross-wise and be
glad they're not in a museum, you
have few friends, Nature, and those you have are
in homespun clothes, what's the problem with
Co2, Nature, you create conflict, you
just stand there and do nothing, you
need to go on a course, you need a cafe
noir, Nature. I've hung
a birdbox on you, Nature, you use
an economy showerhead and almost no sandwich
wrappings any longer, but Norwegains have been a race
of hunters and countrymen and farmers for a thousand
generations who put mould in
wall cavities and turn your rivers into
sluices, but you, Nature, want us just
to go for excusrions in you and get into condition
in you, but I can't be bothered, Nature, in
the country my grandfather can't even empty
the septic tank under your redcurrant bushes, many's
the one who's got lost or drowned in you, bloody
hell, endangered lists are Darwinian
soap series for you, Nature, your species you've
dated for 2 million years and humans
have just 5 hundred thousand left, and my girl
Nature, she cries when I remind her of
this although on those days she's got on
water-based mascara, she still cries, Nature,
my girl's got pregnant again, what do you believe
in, Nature, who do you vote for, you burden
us, I doubt you're real, Nature
while our culture's collective orgasm
approaches half your ecosystem is sick, I'm
fed up of you, Nature, you must pull yourself together, the latest
are these letters you allowed to sprout
from the ground in Nygaard's Park go fuck
yourself - fortunately I see you but
seldom and then only in the Jotunheim



AT THE FISH MARKET, REHABILITATED
1997 the fish has made a fool of itself and has
fainted or perhaps even died, although the fish
have been to the west of the ocean, as far
west as one can go. We walk
by the fish market with sunglasses and smile
the local smile: the fish came from water, the fish
will return to water, if the fish is finished with us
then are we not finished with the fish, the fish
has vitamin A, vitamin B, with Bergen
battery voices we declare: many need
the fish but we, we love the fish more
than Pizza Gandiosa



From Rune Hesjedal's poetry collection 'Nesten Hegredikt' ('Almost Heron Poems')
©, Det Norske Samlaget, 1998

THE BLOND BOY SMILES
to an occasional tourist, a yellow
digger lets it's mechanical grab rest
against the paving stones, at the street café
not far from the Blue Stone a woman
from the government laughs and lets
her glass of white wine be filled a third
time: in this forenoon hour
Bergen is unplugged, without
silicon, the impossible exists
in the best of health, knowledge is
become nonsense, peace stretches
right out to the botanic gardens

Part III: The Rooms 07.09 - 03.12


THE LOW SEPTEMBER SUN
spreads over the projector screen, a street
tree and a container for recycling have an
audition by the planning permission's
curbstone. It dusks, the atmosphere
is humming dun in the cultural landscape
at Wessel's where the genetic slump has quality
coded the conversations before the new
night, born burnt out, shuts itself on a splitscreen

OCTOBER: QUIET
is here, the noise's
MHz makes the quiet more apparent
than before when it just reaches us, when
if finds its place between the chimes of
the clock, the quiet smells of salt, hush
says the quiet and swipes its coded
stripe between the beating
of waves, hush

NOVEMBER
On Sundt corner the pulse beats
by the temple fender, houses hang in
roof-gutters, water colour stretches from
the Blue Stone to the hole in the town's
ozone layer. The throw of the dice offers
for more than the coupling of the busy
bees here at 61° north, in heaven blows
a Bergen papersun moon against the neck

IN DECEMBER WE CELEBRATE
non-Christmas in oval family
portraits, the ice wind is full of
parked snow, the town's metamorphosis
is packed into one suck, one shrug
of the shoulders and one suck
more, over the Town Gate is written
in small letters: "THIS IS NO EXIT";