Excerpts from
All this Coming and Going
By Benny Andersen
IMMIGRANT INTO MY HEART
I met you as a stranger
but discovered that you knew me better than I did
You took me on a voyage into myself
you knew short cuts
to overlooked views
and underlooked coral reefs
What on my map said
DEAD END
turned out to be ways to the mindīs largest
and most loving airport
You took measurements of my daily horizon
and while I sat as on pins and needles
you saw your chance
to pull the pins and needles out
and use them in your pattern
you cut and pieced out
and expanded my old ready-made horizon
by several thousand kilometres
so it wasnīt too tight around life
Not until late into the night
you nodded satisfied:
"At first it will feel
a trifle loose around the past
but it is designed to grow in
and it suits you really well!"
My lifeīs redoubler
immigrant into my heart
with little too wide
slightly floppy horizons
I embrace you
on this intimate night of Spring.
From Benny Andersen: Cosmopolitan in Denmark.
Borgen 1995
Translated by Cynthia La Touche Andersen
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