Excerpts from
Territorial Song
By Pia Tafdrup
The Mount of Olives
The entrance to life is the same for all,
and the exit from it is also the same.
- Wisdom of Solomon 7:6
Calm in the sun, the graveyard on the Mount of Olives
where caravans of stone head off across the western slopes
Calm as those landscapes that suddenly switch to desert
places that have still not been given names
where sand blows and settles in ever new formations
Calm the air, a rent in your garment
and night on the mountain soft as under a bird`s wing
Calm is the air between the graves
on which stones bloom eternally for the dead
- Blessèd be the true Judge -
Calm as in Jerusalem`s depths, where water drips
in cisterns over two millennia old
echoes of souls that still hold vigil
Each drop fall with its platt,
one syllable, like the word dead.
Translated by Roger Greenwald
|
|
