Excerpts from
The Shaking of Creation
By Søren Ulrik Thomsen
Foregive me for seeing your bones before your flesh
your flesh before your dress
and your dress before your floating gaze,
for it´s December, and more naked
than the horrible chicken
that I took from the cooler bin and immediately dropped,
as its thin blood suddenly trickled
through the cellophane and down into my sleeve,
are the trees,
whose black structures pursue me
like everything alive but reminiscent of death,
and everything dead but seeming to live;
math problems with seven variables,
spiraling snailshells of poems,
and cranes of the Nordhavn, which give in the wind
while I fall asleep in your long limbs,
but dream of highrises besieged by scaffolding
and of scaffolding hung with thundering tarpaulins.
Forgive my gaze, which flies over you like seasons
alternately crowning you with the light of a caress
and undressing you like a raw-cold rain;
I don´t claim
that this month´s austere treetrunks
are any truer than downy leaves in May --
and besides, I´ve left truth to the young:
For me it´s enough
to say things as they are.
Translated by Susanna Nied
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