Excerpts from
The Round Room
By Tove Ditlevsen
TIME
For fear of not
lasting the whole time
I often push
my face up under
my hair
and turn my gaze
inwards towards myself
so no stranger can see
through my eyes.
Bits of childhood
float around
in my blood
then as now
irreconcilable with
my age
withered
my incidental youth
stands in my throat
holding back
sweet words of night.
I steal from the time to come
as from a sum
put in the bank
for a rainy day
when the rainy day comes
the time is gone
and there is no time
for a reasonable time
for death.
Translated by Malene S. M. Tingley
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